Spaniards in the Holocaust: Mauthausen, Horror on the Danube 1134587139, 9781134587131

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Spaniards in the Holocaust

This new work focuses on the experience of the large Spanish contingent within the Mauthausen concentration camp, one of the least known but most terrible of the Nazi camps. Among the hundreds of thousands of prisoners who entered Mauthausen were 7000 Spanish Republicans who had fought in the Civil War and found refuge in France, only to be arrested by the Germans in the French collapse of 1940. Their story serves as a microcosm of the experience of all who were prisoners, and it possesses a unique historical value. No other national group succeeded in placing its members in all the key clerical positions in the SS administration, and no other group managed to hide and save all its basic records. This book is the first full-length account in English of the horrors of Mauthausen. It includes not only what the Spaniards endured but what they witnessed, such as the treatment of the Jews, atrocities against Allied prisoners of war, and the mass break-out of Soviet officers in the Death Block. The book concludes with the first account in English of the Battle of Austria and the first account in any language of the assault of the US ‘Thunderbolt’ Division, which ended with the liberation of Mauthausen. Spaniards in the Holocaust makes an outstanding contribution to the literature of the Holocaust. It also presents a wealth of material of vital interest to historians of both the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War: itself. David Wingeate Pike is Distinguished Professor of Contemporary History and Politics at The American University of Paris, and a Vice-Chairman of the California Institute of International Studies, Stanford. His many publications include Vae Victis!, Les Français et la guerre d’Espagne, In the Service of Stalin and the edited works The Opening of the Second World War and The Closing of the Second World War.

Routledge/Cañada Blanch Studies on Contemporary Spain Series editors Paul Preston and Sebastian Balfour Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies, London 1 Spain 1914–1918 Between war and revolution Francisco J.Romero Salvadó 2 Spaniards in the Holocaust Mauthausen, the horror on the Danube David Wingeate Pike 3 Conspiracy and the Spanish Civil War The brainwashing of Francisco Franco Herbert R.Southworth Also published in association with the Cañada Blanch Centre: Spain and the Great Powers Edited by Sebastian Balfour and Paul Preston

Spaniards in the Holocaust Mauthausen, the horror on the Danube

David Wingeate Pike

London and New York

Any passage in this book which appeared in the author’s In the Service of Stalin (1993) is reproduced with the permission of Clarendon Press, Oxford. First published 2000 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2000 David Wingeate Pike All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Pike, David Wingeate. Spaniards in the Holocaust/David Wingeate Pike, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Mauthausen (Concentration camp) 2. World War, 1939–1945– Prisoners and prisons, German. 3. Prisoners of war—Spain. I. Title. D805.M38 P55 2000 940.54′7243′094362–dc21 99–059439 ISBN 0-203-36123-7 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-37379-0 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-22780-1 (Print Edition)

To Cécile, who proposes a similar exposé, of events at a later time, on a lower reach of the Danube.

Mortuorum sorte discant viventes.

Contents

PART I

List of plates

ix

Preface

xi

Acknowledgements

xvi

Abbreviations, acronyms and portmanteau words

xx

A glossary of terms

xxii

Comparative ranks

xxiv

The SS archipelago

1

1

Captives in the Channel Islands

2

2

Deported to the Stalags

8

3

The Spaniards and the KZ universe

10

4

Classification and stratification

13

5

Opposing programmes: extenuation versus extermination

17

6

Everyday life in the KZ

21

7

Oranienburg, Buchenwald and Mauthausen compared

27

8

The survival of the evidence

30

PART II Mauthausen, Category Three

40

1

The arrival

42

2

The outer circle: the SS staff

48

3

The inner circle: the Kapos

56

4

The first Spanish contingents

59

5

International friction and the brothel

64

6

The Spaniards as seen by others

70

vii

7

The paradox of entertainment

74

8

The Revier, antechamber of death

78

9

The quarry and the 186 steps

84

10

Local Kommandos

88

11

The Nebenlager

90

12

Schloss Hartheim and the mobile gas chamber

103

13

Escape and the SS response

105

PART III Survival

112

1

The nucleus of a resistance

113

2

A Spaniard enters the Central Administration Office

117

3

A Spaniard enters the photo lab

123

4

Franco’s consulate in Vienna

133

5

A marriage at Auschwitz

137

6

Holy Night

139

7

A visit to Melk

144

8

An international committee forms

146

9

Atrocities against Allied prisoners

150

10

The Resistance forms a military branch

154

11

Reds and Blues replace the Greens and Blacks

159

12

Incidents in the photo lab

162

13

The Soviet break-out from the Death Block

167

14

Mauthausen as the terminus of evacuation

173

15

Growing fears of a general massacre

180

16

The evacuation of the last Nebenlager

187

17

The photos and the Poschacher boys

192

18

The departure of the SS

196

PART IV Liberation

203

1

The Soviet assault from the east

204

2

The American assault from the west

210

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3

The liberation of Gusen and Mauthausen

218

4

The night of 5–6 May

224

5

The return of the Americans to Mauthausen

237

6

Ebensee: the last liberation

247

7

The American-Soviet link-up

252

8

The final German surrender

255

9

Punishment and impunity for the SS criminals

262

Epilogue

274

Notes

292

Annexes

376

Bibliography

405

Index

415

List of plates

Plate 1 Lagerkommandant Ziereis with members of Mauthausen’s SS staff, possibly all medical doctors. Plate 2 Ziereis with members of his SS non-commissioned staff. Plate 3 Reichsführer-SS Himmler and staff visit Mauthausen, 27 April 1941. Plate 4 SS dignitaries visit Mauthausen, date uncertain. Plate 5 Himmler (in group facing camera) and Kaltenbrunner (back oblique to camera) with other high-ranking SS officers on the main road between Linz and Mauthausen. Plate 6 Kaltenbrunner in Mauthausen reviewing an SS guard. Plate 7 The execution at Mauthausen of Hans Bonarewitz, 29 July 1942. Plate 8 The little museum in Gusen I which was the pride of Ziereis. Plate 9 The Reichsführer-SS on a visit to Mauthausen. Plate 10 An underground factory in the Bergwerk Seegrotte (Hinterbrühl bei Mödling), producing the world’s first single-engined jet fighter, Heinkel He-162. Plate 11 Bachmayer touring the camp. Plate 12 Major-General Holmes E.Dager, commanding US 11th Armored Division (‘Thunderbolt’). Plate 13 Three battalion commanders in US 11th Armored Division. Plate 14 St Georgen, Austria, 5 May 1945. Plate 15 The four American patrol leaders to reach Mauthausen on 5 May 1945. Plate 16 The first US troops enter Mauthausen, 5 May 1945. Plate 17 Mauthausen, 6 May 1945. Plate 18 Frau Bachmayer, wife of Mauthausen’s Schutzhaftlagerführer, and their two little girls. Plate 19 Mauthausen’s garage entrance, 5 May 1945. Plate 20 Mauthausen after the Liberation. Plate 21 ‘Like garbage awaiting collection.’ Plate 22 The scene in the Sanitätslager. Plate 23 Lagerkommandant Ziereis dying, 24 May 1945. Plate 24 The body of Ziereis hanged by the liberated prisoners. Plate 25 The author with S/Sgt Edward A.Bergh and Leopoldine Drexler. Plate 26 The author with S/Sgts Leander W.Hens and Edward A.Bergh, Leopoldine Drexler and Josef Jahn, the Bürgermeister of Mauthausen, in his office, May 1995.

33 34 34 35 35 36 36 37 37 38 39 199 199 200 201 202 202 232 233 233 234 234 235 235 236 236

x

Plate 27 Ramón Bargueño of Mauthausen’s Bunker and Juan de Diego of Mauthausen’s Lagerschreibstube with other Spanish survivors, in front of the monument to the Spanish dead at Mauthausen, May 1995.

236

Preface

The story of Mauthausen covers a little over seven years, from the Anschluss in 1938 to the last week of the Second World War. In that time several hundreds of thousands of prisoners passed through, 200 000 of whom died. While Mauthausen is the name of a village on the Danube as well as that of the granite fortress on the adjacent hill, it served to designate not only the mother camp but also the scores of subsidiaries, large and small, scattered throughout every part of Austria except the Tyrol, but all administered by the Lagerführer in the Hauptlager. It was not technically an extermination camp (Vernichtungslager), nor was it a camp designed for Jews, but prisoners were systematically exterminated there, and Jews were among its victims. As were tens of thousands of prisoners of war who, under the Geneva Convention, were entitled to imprisonment in a Stalag or an Oflag. The majority of these POWs were Soviets, but the few score Dutch, American, and British servicemen (numerically in that order) who were interned there were among those treated the worst. So much for the fiction that the SS mind was governed by notions of race, when in fact it was obsessed by the love of power and the frenzy to humiliate, as the SS demonstrated only too clearly in their treatment of the Dutch. But if the largest prisoner of war contingent was Soviet, the second largest was Spanish, who found themselves in Mauthausen for two reasons: the first, because no government (Franco’s, Pétain’s, or Hitler’s) cared whether they lived or died; the second, because the camp where they were sent was designed as the worst of all in Nazi Germany. Mauthausen was also home, at some time or other, to some 15 000 SS, of which a surprisingly large portion were Austrian.1 It should not be forgotten that, proportionate to population, more Austrians than Germans were members of the Nazi Party and volunteers for the SS, from Kaltenbrunner and Eichmann downwards. It was not the villagers of Mauthausen alone who were privy to the ‘secret’, but every community that was close to a subsidiary camp, from Linz to Wiener Neustadt to the Yugoslav frontier. The Mauthausen archipelago is worthy of a study that would run to many volumes, but it also lends itself to a comprehensive study of a national group that provides a microcosm of the common experience. In this regard, the Spanish community serves ideally as a case-study. Only two national groups (the Austrians and the Polish) arrived in Mauthausen before them, and unlike the French,

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Belgians, and Luxemburgers, they were not evacuated by the International Red Cross in advance of the Liberation. But the two predominant reasons why the Spanish merit this selection as a case-study are, firstly, that no national community emerged from Mauthausen with a general reputation as high as theirs; and secondly, that no other national group succeeded in placing so many of its members in key positions as clerks or assistants (the key to personal survival) in the SS administration. While, then, this book focuses upon the experience of the Spanish community in Mauthausen, it describes not merely what they did but what they witnessed and recorded. In some cases, the evidence that remains, especially the photographic evidence, is entirely the work of the Spaniards. For that reason, considerable material given here was the experience of non-Spaniards, but in most cases only Spaniards survived to record it. The story opens with the Spaniards, prisoners of the Germans in 1940 while in French uniform, being sent to the Channel Islands and especially to the Nazi camps in Alderney. These camps had no connection with KL-Mauthausen. They were administered instead by KL-Neuengamme, but they are included precisely because they were the first camps to which Spanish prisoners were dispatched. The subject is included for another reason, that of historical interest. The so-called official history of the Channel Islands by Charles Cruickshank is woefully incomplete, and the published report by Major ‘Bunny’ Pantcheff is equally unsatisfactory. Pantcheff was a British intelligence officer who was sent in at once, after the Liberation, to carry out a full investigation, but to judge from his report, and assuming that his investigation was thorough, his findings were savaged by the censors. Four years after the Liberation, a trial of two of the Nazi criminals in Alderney was held before a military court in Paris. Why in Paris, when the atrocities were carried out on British territory? And why should the official historian (Cruickshank) shrink from the question? And why was the trial in Paris so outrageously conducted that even now no organigramme exists of the structure of the Nazi authorities? These are not questions that win friends in government circles, but history will reveal the answers, sooner or later, and those who obstructed the historians will come to wish they had not. The story closes with the liberation of Mauthausen, but that had to be fought for, and the Battle of Austria in April–May 1945 was so over-shadowed by the Battle of Berlin that it has been virtually ignored by historians. Ironically, as the various subsidiary camps were evacuated, one after the other, in the face of the advancing Soviets (and, a month later, of the advancing Americans), the Mauthausen region and the strip to the south came to be the last bastion of resistance of the Third Reich, and several of the most infamous of the Waffen-SS divisions were still fighting in this shrinking perimeter of the German defences. The writing of contemporary history is in part the refusal to be misled by those surviving witnesses who, sometimes with intent, sometimes through a natural laziness or ineptitude, distort, fabricate or invent the experiences that they claim as theirs. ‘Old men drooling over their youth,’ as A.J.P.Taylor has described oral

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history. In a famous letter written by a Spanish reader to a Spanish writer, the reader wrote: ‘Many times, in reading accounts of our captivity, and especially those of Mauthausen, the great majority of the former prisoners ask themselves the question whether it is not some other camp that is under discussion, so strange and alien are the statements included in them.’2 Juan de Diego wrote, to the same writer, Mariano Constante: ‘It seems that he who inflates his figures most, is right.’ The warning made no impression. Constante’s performance on Spanish television on 17 January 1976, and the information he presented in a Barcelona daily,3 drew an angry response from his compatriot Casimir Climent. Climent, who worked in the Politische Abteilung from the day he arrived (25 November 1940), described Constante, who was employed in the Disinfection squad, as a novelist who recounts stories that never happened and a participant who claims ranks and responsibilities he never held. As for his ever more inflated figures, added Climent, ‘they all come straight off the top of his egocentric head.’4 Indeed, where exaggeration and fabrication are concerned, no writer on Mauthausen has matched Constante, whose distortion of the facts has left him despised by his compatriots. Of all his inventions, perhaps the most blatant was his claim, which the present author had earlier accepted,5 that his encounter with the SS officer known as ‘la Niña’ had left him with a permanently deformed hand. In the Hôtel Ibis at Orly Airport on 1 April 1997, the author enticed Constante into rolling both his hands into fists. He did; his hands were in perfect shape. The author also asked him: ‘If you were to rewrite all you have written, what would you leave out?’ ‘Nothing,’ replied Constante, without giving the question a moment’s thought. Confronted by his fellow-survivors with falsifying the facts, Constante replied: ‘I have to earn my living.’ The result is that wherever a claim by Constante is not corroborated by a second source, his testimony is not to be considered reliable and has been excluded from the present work. Constante is by no means the only writer at fault. The French survivor Paul Tillard has described how the Kapo Karl Maierhofer was allowed by the SS to keep for himself a tenth of the gold dental fillings that he extracted in Ebensee’s Revier. How much gold? In a book published in 1945, he wrote 3 kg. In a book published in 1965, it was 5 kg. Imagination can increase with age. Ramón Bargueño became known all over Mauthausen when the SS caught him in the kitchen eating jam, and made him eat, and eat. But how much? 3 kg, it was reported in two authoritative sources.6 Some years later, Bargueño estimated again: the container was a 5 kg can, and after that he was forced to swallow half a second can.7 Obviously, the more a story is embellished, the more likely it is to persuade. The rocks that the prisoners of Mauthausen had to carry up the 186 steps weighed indeed a staggering 20 kg, but why does a woman survivor have to claim that for the women it was 40 kg?8 And why would a biographer of Simon Wiesenthal want to embarrass him, and every other survivor, by claiming that on Himmler’s orders the rocks were never to be lighter than 110 lbs?9 Some survivors who write make it a point never to read, which adds freshness and charm to their accounts, but it leaves truth up in the air. Lagerführer Ziereis was shaved by the Spanish barber Azaustre, says one.10 Ziereis

xiv

shaved himself, writes another: ‘He was afraid of any prisoner holding a razor.’11 Others write from the opposite end, with no understanding of the reality of an SS camp. The English journalist Madeleine Bunting, writing on Buchenwald, makes two remarkable claims: first, that the British prisoner Stanley Green smuggled a camera with film into the camp; and second, that he smuggled photographs out of the camp, and that this evidence was used at the Nuremberg trials.12 Bunting owed it to her readers to explain in what part of his naked body did Green, on his arrival in Buchenwald, hide the camera. The two photographs presented by Bunting as ‘the only photographs to be taken inside Buchenwald by an inmate’ furthermore came as a surprise to the international association of survivors of Buchenwald, for two reasons: first because the photographs record scenes that logically belong to the Liberation (a sick inmate is being gently lifted on to a truck while a bystander is apparently wearing a nose-mask), and second, because Buchenwald did indeed have its own prisoner-photographer, the modest but highly respected Georges Angeli, who has never heard the name of Stanley Green and who considers Bunting’s claim incredible.13 The achievement of Constante and others has thus been to set up the revisionists in their attempts to cast doubt on the horror of the camps. The threat from the revisionists is real. This explains why nothing written on Mauthausen up to the present has ever included a reference to a ‘canteen’ for the prisoners. While the term ‘canteen’ was indeed used in Mauthausen for what was in fact no more than a nearly foodless locker, the very word is music to the ears of revisionists in their improved version of life in the KZ: ‘the canteen, football on Sunday afternoon, the camp theatre and concerts, the lake at Ebensee, the pleasant if rigorous and disciplined life of a camp; no rest camp certainly, but a challenging and stimulating opportunity…’ No one should assume that the Austrian communities closest to the SS camps have become the most sensitized to the memory of SS barbarism. The town of Wels is no remote community but equidistant from Linz, Vöcklabruck and Steyr, all of them sites of subsidiary camps. In its immediate vicinity, Wels had its own, at Gunskirchen, where the bodies of 4000 Hungarian Jews, buried in a mass grave, were discovered only in 1985. Wels is also the home of the Austrian film producer Andreas Gruber, who for three years was an elected member of the moderate Conservative Party. When Gruber objected to the erection of a monument in Wels to the Waffen-SS and proposed that a monument be erected instead to the victims of Nazism, and proposed further that 8 November (Kristallnacht) be commemorated throughout Austria, his phone never stopped ringing: he was called a Nestbeschmutzer (one who fouls his own nest) and threatened with death if he persisted. The proposals had to be abandoned. Meanwhile, the SS veterans hold their reunions undisturbed, Sylvester Stadler, formerly of ‘Das Reich’, being particularly active in Carinthia. The SS veterans’ association has taken the name of Kameradschaft IV, the use of IV being an attempt to persuade the world that the SS was the fourth arm (after the Heereswehr, the Kriegsmarine, and the Luftwaffe) of the Wehrmacht.

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Future generations are unlikely to understand why the study of Mauthausen and other camps began so late. It was decades ago that a Mauthausen survivor, then Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the Université de Caën, issued a general warning: ‘The definitive study of the KZ system will be produced by our generation, or it will never be produced.’14 It was a stroke of fortune that the SS, who took such care to liquidate those prisoners who worked in the gas chamber and the crematorium, took no similar action against those, barely a dozen in number, who held the keys to knowledge in the three nerve centres of the Lager: the Schreibstube (administration office), Politische Abteilung (Gestapo office), and Erkennungsdienst (photo identification service). Fate decreed that there would be a Spaniard in a leading position in each of the three. Juan de Diego in the first, with a phenomenal memory which has remained with him through his life, to the extent that the Czech survivor Přemysl Dobiáš reports that he became known as ‘Noranta Nou’ (Catalan for ‘99’), based on the percentage of times his memory was found accurate. Casimir Climent in the second, who died insane, but with his secret collection intact. And Antonio García in the third, who reveals here for the first time how the photo service was run and how the precious prints were saved.

Acknowledgements

My thanks go first to the survivors’ associations and their members who have helped me over the last 20 years, my first interview being with the Czech communist exminister Artur London in 1979. In Paris, the associations include the Amicale de Mauthausen and the Fédération Espagnole de Déportés et Internés Politiques, which produce, respectively, the journals Mauthausen: Bulletin and Hispania. Among the members of the Amicale, I thank its president, Général Pierre SaintMacary, and its vice-president, Jean Gavard, for inviting me on a special visit to Mauthausen in April 1997 when the guides included Marie-Jo Chombart de Lauwe, Pierre-Serge Choumoff, Mariano Constante, and Jean Laffitte. At the Spanish FEDIP, I have seen its membership steadily dwindle, but I express my thanks to its current president, Ramiro Santísteban, and to the current editor of Hispania, Lázaro Nates, who, being mere boys when they were prisoners of Mauthausen, are relatively young. Among other survivors’ associations, whose reunions I attend whenever I can, I would thank especially the Association Française Buchenwald-Dora and its secretary-general, Suzanne Barrès. In France, I thank the late Père Riquet for speaking, with great clarity, though at the end of his life, of his recollections and the impact of Mauthausen on his faith; Pierre Daix, at the time ideologically opposite to Riquet, but tied to him at Mauthausen by the bond of common humanity; the late David Rousset, Daix’s (and Stalin’s) most deadly enemy when the Cold War shattered the bond; Professor Léon Schwarzenberg, the oncologist and former French Minister of Health, who was not, as his two brothers were, a prisoner of Mauthausen but is an important source in the search to know their fate; David Trat, one of the very few survivors among those interned in Alderney, and of invaluable help in probing the mystery of the four Nazi camps erected on British soil; Emile Témime, Professor of History at the Université d’Aix-Marseille, who has been interested in Mauthausen as long as I have; the nuclear physicist Professor Georges Waysand, whose personal interest in Mauthausen (now published) also led to an exchange of evidence; and the film producer Madelyn Most, who has also interviewed survivors and shared her findings with me. Among others in France who have helped me, I would mention especially Dr Denise Mallé-Dupuis, in the remote town of Digne, who kindly invited me to study for some days the voluminous and unpublished memoirs of her late husband

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Miguel Mallé; Mme Christiane Borrás, the widow of José Borrás Lluch, who sent me a single document, but one of unsurpassed importance: the original of the list, compiled on a little sheet in pencil by Casimir Climent, of the members of the SS who worked in the Politische Abteilung (Gestapo office) in Mauthausen at the time that Climent himself worked as a clerk in that worst of places; Ramón Bargueño, who declined to meet me for two years, until our paths finally crossed through a common interest in the novelist Christine Bravo, after which he provided me with vital information on the working of Mauthausen’s inner prison; Baldomero Chozas, who supplied me with important information on the Nebenlager at Schlier, and Marcelino López with the same on Gusen; Rafael Álvarez, who wrote a series of articles on a particular escape from a Nebenlager, and was a useful source on the subject of escape and its consequences; Jacinto Cortés, who received me in his home in Perpignan, and who could have been of much greater help in the story of how the photographs were saved, but who chose instead to speak of other things; Jorge Semprún, the former Spanish Minister of Culture, who met me several times and won for me a contract for a book with Fayard, but whose recollections on Buchenwald tend to be fragmentary: he reveals only what he chooses to reveal. Finally among those in France, Mme Odette Ester, the widow of José Ester Borrás, anarchist and founding-president of FEDIP, with an unparalleled collection of material on the Spaniards of Mauthausen, who promises decade after decade to produce her husband’s account but, distrustful of almost all others, prefers to sit on a treasure which, we can only hope, will not be ultimately lost to posterity. In Austria, I have a number of people to thank in the Linz region and especially in the villages of Mauthausen and Gusen. Manuel García Barrado, the former custodian of the Mauthausen Museum, lives in Mauthausen village. He is one of a dozen or more Spanish survivors of Mauthausen who chose to live in Austria after 1945. These survivors have an association, Gedenkverein der Republikanischen Spanier in Österreich, whose coordinator, Silvia Dinhof-Cueto in Neusiedl am See, provided me with information in my search for other survivors, among them Francesc Comellas in Linz. In Mauthausen, the Bürgermeister Josef Jahn put me in contact with Leopoldine Drexler, one of the daughters of Anna Pointner who saved the photographs. With the help of the Austrian film producer Andreas Gruber, who provided me with other valuable assistance, I could obtain the testimony of Erich Neumüller in Mauthausen village and Valentine Weigl-Hallerberg in St. Valentin. Living in Schardenberg but writing a thesis at Universität Passau, Martina Schröck joined me in an extensive correspondence that investigated many matters, especially the Jacinto Cortés affair, which she uncovered and which provides the closing to this book. In Gusen, Martha Gammer and Rudolf Haunschmied sent me much material on the underground factories and on the situation in the local area in the tense period leading up to the arrival of the first American units. Without the information supplied to me by the veterans of the US 11th Armored Division (‘Thunderbolt’), I would not have been able to compile the account of the assault on Austria from the west. Colonel Richard Seibel sent me his account, but the greatest contribution by far was made by the former Staff-Sergeant Leander Hens,

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who sent me everything he could find, while further help came from other NCOs, especially Edward Bergh, Harry Saunders, and Raymond Buch, and from BrigadierGeneral Michael Greene and David B.Dolese, MD. On the question of resolving the remarkable dispute among American veterans as to who reached Mauthausen and when, the contribution of Pierre-Serge Choumoff was vital. William I.Nichols provided me with reactions of the American press corps to the liberation of the first SS camp in Germany (Buchenwald), and in the follow-up, Alice E.Kennington, of the Office of Special Investigations, Criminal Division, of the US Department of Justice, gave me some important leads. A number of other survivors or investigators have also helped. Among the Austrians and Czechs, the ex-prisoners Simon Wiesenthal, Dr Drahomir Barta, Dr Přemysl Dobiás, and Josef Klat; and the historians Dr Florian Freund of the Dokumentationsarchiv der Österreichischen Widerstandes in Vienna, Dr Manfred Rauchensteiner of the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum in Vienna, and in Germany the research partners Andreas Ruppert and Dorothee von Keitz in Paderborn. Among the Britons, the survivor Sir Robert Sheppard, the Nuremberg investigator Peter Calvocoressi, and the private investigator Gordon Adams, who died in 1998 and who remains a superb example of the outside amateur who devotes an important part of his life to the pursuit of a limited but significant goal: in his case, the identification of the 47 Allied special agents martyred in Mauthausen in September 1944. In that task he received much help from Lieutenant-Colonel C.G.Stallard at the British Embassy in Vienna, and especially from Henny Dominicus of the Stichting Vriedenkring ‘Mauthausen’ in Amsterdam. Also in Amsterdam, I thank Mirjam Ohringer for inviting me to speak on Mauthausen at a symposium held there on 21 October 1998 to mark the 60th anniversary of the opening of the camp. In the Italian connection, I owe much to Commendatore Gino Valenzano in Turin, both for his testimony to the valour of the Spaniards whom he came to know in their common captivity, and for his unique knowledge, as a member of the Badoglio family, of the fate of the Marshal’s son. I express my gratitude to the archivists, notably in the Bundesarchiv in Berlin for slightly relaxing the regulations; to Herr Schneider, Richter am Amtsgericht in the Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltung in Ludwigsburg; to Stephen Walton of the Imperial War Museum in London; and to my friend and fellow-historian P.M.H.Bell for searching in vain in the Public Record Office in London for information on Kaltenbrunner that may well not exist; that in itself is a find, and adds to the value of the unidentified document described in the Bibliography. But I have left the best to the last. The two greatest contributors to the material in this book remain the Spaniards Juan de Diego and Antonio García. Over the 15 years I have known de Diego, during which he has always shown a total readiness to discuss any question, I have always been amazed at the way he has come up, each time, with precise information on an incident never before discussed. Similarly, Antonio García, whom I met in time to receive four years of his hospitality and information, deserves more thanks than this acknowledgement can express. That gratitude goes to him also for those photographs presented here that he saved at a

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terrifying risk, and in the matter of the illustrations, I wish further to thank Přemysl Dobiáš, Martha Gammer, Rudolf Haunschmied, and the ‘Thunderbolt’ veterans mentioned above for sending me unpublished items from their collections. Finally, my deepest appreciation goes to my three technical assistants, Millay Hyatt, Elizabeth Kwok, and David Bornstein, all of The American University of Paris, who over a period of four years provided me with excellent help.

Abbreviations, acronyms, and portmanteau words

AG AMI BV CIC CGT CICR CNR CNT CTE ERR FEDIP FTP GE Gestapo GTE HJ IRC KIM KL or KZ Komsomol KPD NCO NN ODESSA Oflag OKW

Aktiengesellschaft Appareil militaire international (Mauthausen) Befristete Vorbeugungschaft Counter-Intelligence Corps (US) Confédération générale du travail (communist) Comité international de la Croix-Rouge Conseil national de la Résistance Confederatión nacional del trabajo (anarchist) Compagnies de travailleurs étrangers Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg Fédération espagnole de déportés et internés politiques Francs-tireurs et partisans Guerrilleros españoles Geheime Staatspolizei (Heinrich Müller) Groupes de travailleurs étrangers Hitlerjugend International Red Cross Kommunisticheskiy international molodyozhi (Communist Youth International) Konzentrationslager Kommunisticheskaya molodyozh (Communist Youth) Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands non-commissioned officer Nacht und Nebel Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen Offizier-Lager (POW camp) Oberkommando Wehrmacht (Hitler, Keitel)

xxi

OSS OT PCE PCF PCI POW PSUC Pz. K. RSHA RU SA Sch SD Sipo SOE SS Stalag STO V1, V2 WVHA

Office of Strategic Services (US) Organisation Todt Partido comunista de España Parti communiste français Partito communista italiana prisoner of war Partit socialista unificat de Catalunya (communist) Panzerkorps Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Heydrich, then Kaltenbrunner) Rückkehr unerwünscht (prisoner to be executed) Sturmabteilung (Roehm, then Lutze) Schutzhäftling (German red-triangle KZ prisoner) Sicherheitsdienst Sicherheitspolizei Special Operations Executive (British) Schutzstaffel (Himmler) Stammlager (POW camp) Service du travail obligatoire Vergeltungswaffe Wirtschafts Verwaltungshauptamt

A glossary of terms

Appellplatz roll-call square Arbeitsdienst work Kommando Arrest prison inside the Bunker Badeaktion code for execution by drowning Baukommando construction squad Bunker execution Block Drillich prisoner’s striped uniform Effektenkammer section holding the prisoners’ belongings Erkennungsdienst photo lab Friseur prisoner-barber Gaskammer gas chamber Genickschluss execution by shooting in the back of the neck Gummischlauch rubber truncheon carried by Kapos Häftling prisoner Hauptlager the main camp Himbeerpflücken ‘raspberry picking’: execution on the perimeter Kazettler concentration camp prisoner Klagemauer the wailing wall at Mauthausen Klosettreiniger prisoner assigned to clean SS living quarters Kohlenfahrer crematorium worker Kommandantur office of the commandant Krankenlager prisoners’ hospital Kugel-Aktion execution on arrival Lagerschreibstube general administration office Lagerschreiber prisoner-clerk in the general administration office Muselmann derelict prisoner, too weak to work Mutterlager mother camp Pfahlbinden torture by hanging Politische Abteibung the Gestapo office Prominenter prisoner selected for a skilled post Puff slang term for prisoners’ brothel Rapportführer SS duty officer at prisoners’ muster Revier dispensary; usual term for prisoners’ hospital Russenlager prisoners’ hospital Sanitätslager formal SS name for prisoners’ hospital Scheissekompanie squad assigned to latrine duty Schutzhaftlagerführer SS officer responsible for security Siedlungsbau housing development Sonderbau brothel, but also the Arrest Standortarzt chief medical officer Steinträger trestle for carrying rocks

xxiii

Strafkompanie punishment squad Stück, Stücke SS term for KZ prisoner (s) Stubediener prisoner responsible for cleaning the prisoners’ quarters Todesmeldung register of deaths Unterführerheim NCO’s mess Vernichtungslager extermination camp Weckruf the morning call Zigeunerkapelle gypsy orchestra Zugang incoming prisoner

Note: On questions of authority between Wehrmacht officers and SS officers of equal rank, SS officers automatically rose by one rank.

Comparative ranks

Part I The SS archipelago

Es gibt einen Weg in die Freiheit. Seine Meilensteine sind: Gehorsam, Fleiss, Ordnung, Sauberkeit, Ehrlichkeit, Opfermut, und Liebe zum Vaterland.*

1 Captives in the Channel Islands

The Spanish refugees in France were among the first to suffer the consequences of the disaster of June 1940. More than 10 000 Spaniards were taken prisoner by the Germans, and the Vichy Government made no attempt to protect them under international agreements pertaining to prisoners of war. Many of them thus found themselves back where they started, in the concentration camps of the south-west.1 On 27 September 1940, René Belin, the Vichy Minister of Labour and Industrial Production, introduced a law whereby all male foreigners aged 19 to 54 who were a burden on the French economy and who could not return to their country of origin were subject to enlistment in the Groupes de travailleurs étrangers; they would receive no salary, but their families were entitled to aid according to rates fixed by the government.2 Perhaps as many as 15 000 Spaniards who were enlisted in this way found themselves employed by the Organization Todt (OT) in the building of the Atlantic Wall.3 Their work included the construction of the submarine bases at Lorient, La Pallice, and in the Gironde estuary, and of an airfield at La Rochelle, despite frequent bombing attacks by the Royal Air Force. A considerable number of these workers were transferred in late 1941 to Vigo, in north-western Spain, where they were employed in the construction of another submarine base, probably intended for German use.4 Other contingents of Spaniards, estimated at 4000, were sent to the Germanoccupied Channel Islands. The four principal islands (Guernsey, Jersey, Alderney and Sark) had fallen, in that order, between 30 June and 4 July 1940. Alderney was special in the sense that virtually the entire population (of 1100) could be evacuated to England in time.5 A Spanish prisoner, Francisco Font, who was sent to that island made the observation that all the birds had left with them. When the Islands fell under Nazi rule, they were administered by a military government, at first under Oberst Graf Rudolf von Schmettow. The Wehrmacht forces in the Islands remained fairly constant, with some 12 000 in Guernsey, 9000 in Jersey, and 3000 in Alderney. In October 1941, however, Hitler issued his Directive on the Fortification and Defence of the Channel Islands, requiring immediate and intensive work on strong concrete fortifications. This was to be carried out by foreign labour, ‘especially Russian and Spanish’.6 Very large stocks of cement and steel reinforcement arrived in the same month, and responsibility for

CAPTIVES IN THE CHANNEL ISLANDS 3

the construction was given to the Organization Todt, which established its headquarters in Saint-Malo on the mainland. Its labour force reached 16 000, with 7000 in Guernsey, 5000 in Jersey, and 4000 in Alderney. These consisted of both volunteer workers, including Germans, and slave workers, including Spaniards, Jews, and Soviet prisoners of war, all of whom provided the labour for a large number of German construction firms engaged in the building of the Atlantic Wall. In the course of 1943 many of these firms would transfer their operations to the mainland, and by mid-1944 almost all had left the Islands.7 The Catalan lieutenant Joan Dalmau, who later became a British subject, was among the first batch of 2000 workers (mainly Spaniards, but including Frenchmen, Belgians, Dutch, Poles, and Czechs) who were transported from Saint-Malo to St Helier, Jersey. There they worked on the construction of the sea-wall in St Brelade’s Bay, and when that was completed, in the summer of 1942, on the building of tunnels underneath Fort Regent. By that time, by one estimate, 18 000 foreign workers had arrived in or passed through Jersey, and the Ukrainian survivor Vasilly Marempolsky remembers that when he arrived, as a boy of 15 in August 1942, most of the prisoners were either Spanish or Soviet. Spaniards on Jersey were sent also to the OT camp (Lager Himmelman) at St Ouen in the northwest of the island, and a Spanish hospital was set up in another OT camp at St John, north of St Helier. The Spanish custom in practice at the time of allowing male nurses to serve as doctors explains the role of Gasulla Sole, to whom Marempolsky owed his survival.8 A curious feature of camp life on Jersey was that the workers were allowed, even forced, to leave the camp in order to seek food outside, thus reducing the cost of their upkeep. The people of Jersey did not lack in generosity, even when the local Feldkommandant, a certain Schultz, ordered them to stop providing any food to foreign workers.9 Despite the help of the islanders, general starvation set in. Spaniards and others were reduced to eating limpets and acorns, and many prisoners, especially those not accustomed to rural life, died as a result of eating poisonous plants, especially night-shade, whose berries were tempting to the famished. Those causing trouble were sent to Elizabeth Castle, where a prisoner could find himself in a cell with 0.2 square metres of floorspace, forcing him to sleep standing. In January 1943, Dalmau and his Catalan friend Vidai were part of a small group taken by boat from Jersey to Saint-Servan-sur-Mer on the French mainland. Schultz himself was in the escort. An opportunity arose: Vidal knocked out the commandant, Dalmau strangled him, and the body was tossed into the sea. The Germans, oddly enough, came to the conclusion that Schultz had been swept overboard, but Dalmau and Vidal still finished up in the island-prison of Alderney.10 Alderney, only three square miles in area, had the distinction of housing the only SS camp erected on British soil. In the initial stage of occupation, the fortification of the island was limited to reinforcing the existing forts and building some new strongpoints.11 With the arrival of the OT in November 1941, the prisoner population reached its peak, between 1942 and 1944, of at least 4000, under the authority of three separate organizations: the OT, the Wehrmacht, and later the

4 THE SS ARCHIPELAGO

SS.12 The first two had the right to the prisoners’ labour, with the OT being contracted principally to Fuchs of Koblenz and Sager und Wörner of Munich. The SS would remain in charge of the camps, which were administered as Nebenlager of KL-Neuengamme, near Hamburg. Four separate camps were established, all named after North Sea islands and numbered 1–4: Helgoland (on Platte Saline, between St Anne and Fort Tourgis), Norderney (near Château à l’Etoc), Sylt (in the southwest, between the airfield and Telegraph Bay), and Borkum (on Longy road). Helgoland under its Lagerführer Johann Hoffmann included 700 Russians, Ukrainians and Poles, out of a detachment of 2000 who reached the Channel Islands in July 1942 after being marched across Europe. Norderney was for slaves in general, but mainly Spaniards, French, Algerians and Moroccans. Borkum housed German skilled workers. Sylt, which opened in October 1942 under its Lagerführer Puhr, at first housed only 500 political prisoners whom the OT put to work in the construction of the Westbatterie.13 The group included a special punishment squad of 120 Wehrmacht officers and men who had been sent from KL-Neuengamme, and some of the officers were of high rank: the group even included two former members of the SS. They had all been accused of disloyalty to Hitler, and were to remain prisoner until Hitler had won the war (and the world), whereupon they would receive the just punishment for their faithlessness. Sylt won the reputation of being the most terrible of the four camps. It stood on high, almost vertical cliffs, and was exposed even more than the other camps to the frequent gale-force winds. But nature’s elements were kinder than man’s, and prisoners who died there were not buried but were thrown from the cliffs. Others, such as a group of seven who collapsed on the first day, were still alive when they were thrown over.14 Meanwhile, Helgoland and Norderney could hardly be called less brutal. The work day was at least 12 hours, seven days a week, with a 10–30 minute break at midday and a half-day on Sunday once a month. No clothes were issued; prisoners continued to wear what they arrived in. The only replacements were wooden clogs, when their shoes wore out. The Russian survivor Georgi Ivanovich Kondakov has described Alderney’s prison and recounts the fate of 16 prisoners crammed into a cell no larger than 2.5 by 1.5 metres. They stood together, shoulder to shoulder, for three days, without food and with toilet facilities only in the morning.15 Alderney was unusual in that it had a mixed command. The overall command of the island was at first given to Hauptmann Karl Hoffmann, of the 319th Infantry Division, which was to garrison all the Islands until the end of the war. Hoffmann arrived on 27 July 1941. As the garrison grew, the command was upgraded, and Hoffmann was replaced in January 1942 by Oberstleutnant Rohde.16 Hoffmann nevertheless remained in Alderney as the specialist for planning the elaborate network of fortifications, and in the process won his own reputation as a sadist in his treatment of the prisoners; the fact that he was an officer from an average Wehrmacht regiment should not be overlooked. It was Hoffmann who allocated the tasks to the OT commander, who in all other respects answered to his superior in Cherbourg.17 The OT command in Alderney was given to OT-Hauptbauleiter Leo

CAPTIVES IN THE CHANNEL ISLANDS 5

Ackermann, assisted by OT-Bauleiter Theo Konetz. The arrival of the SS naturally altered matters. It was on 23 February 1943 that the SS Baubrigade I, formed in September 1942, arrived on Alderney, headed by SS-Hauptsturmführer Maximilian List and his two deputies, SS-Obersturmführer Kurt Klebeck and SS-Obersturmführer Georg Braun. They brought with them an SS staff from KL-Neuengamme and some 1060 prisoners, approximately half of them Soviet, from KL-Sachsenhausen. Apart from SS-Hauptscharführer Otto Högelow, few of the other members of the SS garrison were ever identified.18 The command of Sylt was now given to List, and its existence became top secret. The 1100 prisoners it now held were mainly Soviet and German, but Spaniards were also included. The arrogance, meanwhile, which the SS displayed to all other Germans was not lost on the prisoners. ‘Every day,’ said a survivor, ‘we witnessed acts of insubordination. Even an SS NCO would reply roundly to a colonel or a naval captain.’19 Gerhard Nebel, who was a Wehrmacht soldier stationed in Alderney, attests to the fact that the whole of Alderney was ‘overrun with Frenchmen, Berbers and Spanish Reds’.20 Curiously, the Frenchman David Trat, who became president of the Alderney survivors’ association, reports that he never saw a Spaniard on the island, and indeed in 1996 there were only three known Spanish survivors of Alderney.21 Since Trat arrived in 1943, it would seem that the Spaniards in Alderney, like the Spaniards in Mauthausen, suffered their heaviest losses in the period 1940–2, for it was indeed to Norderney, where Trat himself was sent, that most of the Spaniards were also assigned. A convoy of 297 of them were the first to arrive on the island. They were joined by Soviet prisoners of war and a group of 700 Jews, transported from the sorting camp at Drancy, who were kept in separate sections.22 Another group, classified as ZKZ,23 was also kept apart from the rest; while cosmopolitan in composition, it consisted mainly of North Africans and Indochinese arrested in Marseilles.24 Little suggests that Norderney was preferable to Sylt. Some prisoners at Norderney had earlier been held in the French penal colonies that included Devil’s Island, and they called that experience ‘du caramel’ compared with what they had now. Its first Commandant was OT-Haupttruppführer Karl Tietz, who had previously served as Commandant at Sylt. He was replaced, first by Konetz up until his promotion to Bauleiter, and then in December 1942 by OT-Haupttruppführer Adam Adler, who also held the SS rank of Untersturmführer and took care to wear its uniform.25 Adler, however, was already 44-years-old when he was appointed Lagerführer, an age more than ripe for an SS second lieutenant. Despite his service in Poland, where he was accused (in testimony at his trial) of killing 3500 Poles, he had clearly been passed over for promotion. This was easily explicable. By profession a truck-driver, he thought of nothing but his food, his drink and his women, and, being constantly drunk, he was rarely at his job. He nevertheless retained his post until the end, in May 1944, when the camp was evacuated. His command, of course, was relatively easy, even if, from February 1943, he was answerable to the SS lieutenant Georg Braun. Since there was apparently no chance of escape, security was light. The camp had no

6 THE SS ARCHIPELAGO

barbed wire, watch-towers, or sentries. The SS staff at Norderney consisted of only two officers and four men. Since the prisoners slept in the camp but worked outside, in every corner of the island, the SS at the camp were on duty only at night. Inside the camp, discipline was, as elsewhere in the KZ archipelago, entrusted to selected prisoners of various nationalities, and in Alderney they were known as the ‘Todts’. Unlike elsewhere, it was the prisoners who were ordered to hold the victim down when Adler or his deputy administered a whipping.26 Again, the standard SS rules of hygiene did not apply here. There were no barbers (Friseur), and the prisoners did not cut their hair.27 No drinking water was available in the camp, primarily because of the scarcity of wells in the island, and prisoners would suck the grass on the road to and from the quarry where they worked, under the authority of the OT. Many died of disease.28 The prisoner-doctors, many of them Jewish, did what they could, but they had virtually no medicine or equipment. The help given in these circumstances by a German doctor was especially appreciated. Though none of the survivors remembered his name, this 50year-old Oberleutnant (reserve) in the Kriegsmarine saved the lives of hundreds of sick prisoners by having them evacuated to Cherbourg.29 Adler’s immediate predecessor, and now his deputy as Unterlagerführer, was OTMeister Heinrich Evers, by profession a roof-coverer, and nicknamed ‘Mucos’ by the Spaniards on account of his perennially runny nose. If Adler was lazy by nature, Evers was the exact opposite, though he was only four years younger. So conscientious was he that he would work from 4 a.m. to at least 10 p.m., and sometimes till midnight. As a roof-coverer, however, he had suffered a fall, in 1926, when he hurt his head and damaged his spinal column. He was also epileptic, and in his epileptic fits he would go into spasms of the most savage fury and then return to a calm. It was also noted that Evers was always more brutal on the occasions that Adler was present, as though he was seeking a good report. Evers had also served, up to the time of his injury, as a football referee in the Rhineland, and had remained a football enthusiast. This enthusiasm, coupled with the respect he genuinely felt for the medical profession, explains the rapport that formed between Evers and the prisoner Dr Yvan Dreyfus, a French Jew who became Norderney’s senior doctor. Dreyfus was a former international footballer, and to Dreyfus, Evers was ready to confide a little. But this did not save Dreyfus whenever Evers went into one of his fits. Dreyfus’ ordeal was to have his jaw broken and all his upper teeth smashed, to have to stand still from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m., and after that to be dismissed from his post, with his successor ordered by Evers never to allow Dreyfus any medical treatment. Evers then went around the camp Blocks shouting to the prisoners about what he had done to Dr Dreyfus: ‘I thrashed him as I’ve never thrashed any prisoner before.’30 Two incidents at the end of 1943 were particularly destructive to the prisoners’ morale. On New Year’s Eve, Evers arrived in the camp, summoned the prisoners, held high a large pack of letters, and announced: ‘Gentlemen, here are letters for you from your families, and here’s what I’m going to do with them.’ Opening the stove, he threw the whole pack into the flames.31 On the same night, prisoners were

CAPTIVES IN THE CHANNEL ISLANDS 7

put to work on a tunnel, 25 metres long, under the jetty between the camp and Arch Bay. Of the two ends of the tunnel, one was sealed and the other reduced in its entrance to a narrow corridor only 70 centimetres wide. A machine-gun post was set up outside the entrance, the weapon trained not on Allied invaders from the sea but on the entrance to the tunnel. It was clear to the prisoners that in the event of an Allied landing in France, the prisoners were to be herded into the tunnel to suffocate to death; those working on it succeeded in hiding some pick-axes and spades inside. Evers, of course, told the prisoners that the purpose of the tunnel was to protect them and announced one day that an air-raid drill would be held the following morning at 5 a.m. Accordingly, when the sirens sounded, all the prisoners, taking only a blanket, had to race naked to the tunnel. Several hundred prisoners were herded inside, where they were pressed together like sardines. At the end of 15 minutes, when the rehearsal ended, several emerged half-asphyxiated from the lack of air.32 Despite such torments, the Spanish communists claim that in the Channel Islands they succeeded in assembling a radio on which they were able to listen to the BBC and even Radio Moscow, and that they even circulated a news-sheet entitled Acero.33 As for escape, there was virtually no chance at all,34 and of the estimated 4000 Spaniards sent to the Channel Islands, only 59 survived.35

2 Deported to the Stalags

Without taking into account those Spanish workers who later volunteered, over 30 000 Spanish refugees were deported from France to Germany,1 and of these perhaps 15 000 entered Nazi camps.2 The great majority of these had served in the Travailleurs étrangers units. If, as we have seen, some of these were at first sent back into the French camps or into the Vichy forced-labour groups, most of them shared the initial experience described by Amadeo Cinca Vendrell and Juan de Diego Herranz, both of whom were former internees in the French concentration camp at Septfonds (Tarn-et-Garonne) and then volunteers in the 103rd Compagnie de travailleurs étrangers. This company, under the command of the French Lieutenant Simon, consisted of some 250 Spaniards, and Cinca Vendrell, a captain in the Republican Army, was given subordinate command. The unit had been assigned to the extension of the Maginot Line to the west, and had been stationed at SaintHilaire, near Cambrai. Simon was a courageous officer, but he was a retired veteran of the First World War who understood nothing of Guderian’s concept of blitzkrieg. Cinca’s pleas that the unit be allowed to retreat were brushed aside, and on 20 May 1940, in the forest of Amiens, Simon saw his whole company taken prisoner. The character of their captors was soon in evidence. The prisoners were marched 25 miles a day in the summer heat almost without food or water, with four to five hours of rest. Several Frenchwomen tried to give the prisoners water, apples, or eggs, but were driven away by the Germans at bayonet point. The Spaniards were also witnesses to the way the Wehrmacht treated their British prisoners of war. Perhaps because the British, unlike the French, did not allow defeat to destroy their morale—‘they whistled all the way’—they were treated, as Captain Cinca reported it, worse than the others. Whenever the convoy encountered dead Germans on the side of the road, it was exclusively the British prisoners who were forced to dig the graves and bury the corpses, at the same time forfeiting whatever rations the Germans made available. At a cross-roads near the German frontier, the British contingent was separated from the Spanish contingent and the two continued in different directions, the Spaniards marching to Trier. On the way the convoy came across two cows in a field. The Wehrmacht officers saw an opportunity for some amusement. Killing the cows with their pistols, they then left the animals to the starving Spaniards,

DEPORTED TO THE STALAGS

9

watching with glee as the prisoners tore the cows apart like savages. Arriving in Trier, they were herded into Stalag XII-D, where they learned more about the character of their Nazi captors. They were still in French uniform, and prisoners of war with all the rights pertaining, but apparently the Germans had heard that Spaniards were proud, and for that reason they ordered them to drop their trousers, defecate into their hand, then, holding their faeces, walk around the camp for two hours. ‘It was for me, for all of us,’ attested Juan de Diego, ‘the most abominable humiliation. The memory of it will haunt me forever.’3 After a short stay in Stalag XII-D the Spaniards proceeded to Stalag XIII-A in Nuremberg. There, in the holy city of National Socialism, they were marched through the streets, the German populace spitting at them and making signs with their forefingers slicing their throats, as if to say they were as good as dead already. From Nuremberg they were taken in sealed cattle-cars to Stalag VII-A in Moosburg, north-east of Munich, where to their surprise they were interrogated by the Gestapo. A group of 392, all of them Spaniards, was now assembled for a final destination. Still carrying their meagre possessions, at most a small suitcase, they reboarded the cattle-cars, but in leaving Munich they could at least take away one happy memory: the German railroad workers were dismayed at the condition of the Spaniards and showed their compassion, with some even giving the clenched fist salute, a rare and risky tribute. The worst of the journey was still ahead. They had received food and water before they left Nuremberg, but no more during the 18 hours they spent in the train. The journey took place during the heat of August, some of the men were suffering from dysentery, all physical functions took place within the wagon,4 and the air was Augean. At 8 a.m. on 6 August 1940, the Spanish contingent arrived at Mauthausen —one of the first non-German groups to do so—and discovered the full horror of the Nazi concentration camp universe.5

3 The Spaniards and the KZ universe

Most of the Spaniards who entered Nazi concentration camps passed first through a Stalag, though not necessarily any mentioned above.1 The German High Command took the decision to refuse the status of prisoner of war to the Spaniards, even if they were captured in French uniform. The belief, prevalent in Spanish Republican circles for the last 50 years, that the German decision was the result of a request by Serrano Súñer to Himmler, has no documentary support whatever, and the evidence on which it rests is a demonstrable fiction.2 The decision was undoubtedly taken on the harsh but legal basis that Germany was not at war with Spain, that these Spaniards had no passports, and that their status was stateless. The German purpose, however, in sending them to concentration camps went further: the Spaniards were dedicated antifascists who had fought the Germans and Italians in Spain, and as inveterate enemies of Nazi Germany they deserved the worst that Germany could devise. Some passed through the Neue Bremm punishment camp near Saarbrücken, where prisoners were held for only a month but subjected to a regime that broke all but the fittest: physical exercises hour after hour, and circling a pond in the ‘frog position’, with knees bent and hands behind the head.3 Beyond that, Mauthausen was the logical terminus. Although Spaniards were sent to several other camps, probably nine-tenths of all Spanish prisoners were sent to Mauthausen and its various Nebenlager throughout Ostmark, the land once called Austria.4 Only in the case of Mauthausen and some of its Nebenlager can accurate statistics be presented. The fact that accurate statistics can be given at all is remarkable, and we shall examine later the fortune that came even in such adversity. The monument at Mauthausen to the Spanish dead gives the figure of 7000. The following tableau presents the most authoritative estimates of the number of Spaniards who entered the camps and died there. Preference should be given to the figures of Casimir Climent Sarrión.5 Not only was he in a most privileged post, as we shall see, but he was also a man of patience and painstaking care. Razola, on the other hand, does not explain his sources, and they surely come from a number of personal and unfounded estimates, based on memory.6 As for Borrás, his figures are based on an amalgam of sources, among which Climent remains the most reliable.7 A number of observations should be made. The figures for Mauthausen (or at least Climent’s) omit those who arrived at the station dead, or who were murdered on the road and taken straight to the crematorium without receiving a number.

THE SPANIARDS AND THE KZ UNIVERSE 11

Table 1

They also omit those who died during the last days prior to liberation, when no records were kept, and when the mortality rate was highest. Nor do we have accurate figures for such Nebenlager in Austria as Ebensee, where the proportion of Spaniards was very high;21 or Schlier, near Salzburg, which comprised three parts (Zipf, Redl-Zipf, and Vöcklabruck), with the 350 Spaniards at Vöcklabruck making up the entire penal colony;22 or Steyr-Münichholz, the munitions factory 30 kilometres south of Mauthausen, where the Spaniards were also in a large majority from spring 1941 onwards.23 Vilanova adds that Spaniards were in the majority in all three Gusen Kommandos as well as in Ternberg.24 It is a reasonable estimate that in 1941 Spaniards accounted for 60 per cent of all the prisoners in Mauthausen. A final general observation concerns the manner of their dying. Razola considers that more Spaniards were murdered by the SS than were killed off by cold, hunger, or forced labour.25 Vilanova estimates that 95 per cent of all the Spaniards who died were exterminated in the period 1940–2.26 The reason for this, as we shall see, was

12 THE SS ARCHIPELAGO

the shortage of manpower that the Third Reich faced from 1943. In calculating the proportion of deaths to the number detained, Vilanova takes the figure of 8189 Spaniards interned in Nazi camps and that of 5015 exterminated, and presents the figure of 61 per cent, the highest percentage among all the national groups. In fact, the mortality rate is even higher when it is remembered that 50 per cent of the survivors died in their first year of freedom.27 But in the story we are about to tell, freedom is a long way off.

4 Classification and stratification

In the first week of 1941, Himmler decided to classify the Konzentrationslager. On 2 January, Reinhard Heydrich, as head of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), issued a secret circular (later produced at the Nuremberg Tribunal) which divided the camps into three principal categories. The first category (known as Stufe I) included Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Auschwitz I (Gleiwitz); its prisoners were considered rehabilitable. Stufe II included Buchenwald, Auschwitz III (BunaMonowitz), Flossenbürg, and Neuengamme; although charged with more serious crimes, the prisoners in these camps were still considered capable of redemption. Stufe III (or Ausmerzungslager) included only Mauthausen, Gross-Rosen, and Auschwitz II (Birkenau); this category was reserved for ‘hardened criminals and antisocial elements incapable of rehabilitation’. This classification was later modified, as we shall see, when the Economic Administration Office (Wirtschaftsverwaltungshauptamt, or SS-WVHA) established three new categories, but the classification Stufe III continued to denote a camp where prisoners were never to be released.1 Mauthausen never lost this classification of Stufe III, the worst. In the offices of the RSHA it was referred to by its nickname Knochenmühle, the bone-grinder. One way to punish prisoners at Auschwitz was to send them to work in the quarry at Mauthausen. Buchenwald too had its quarry, but the prisoners there knew what Mauthausen meant, and dreaded the thought of being transferred.2 Suzanne Busson, who was evacuated from Ravensbrück to Mauthausen, remarked that ‘Ravensbrück in hindsight seemed like paradise’.3 It should be noted here that the KL were different in kind from the extermination camps (Vernichtungslager) which is what Auschwitz II (Birkenau) became. All six of the Vernichtungslager were located outside pre-1939 Germany, in a great circle in Poland. Though the fate of the inmates could be the same, the difference lies in the essential purpose of the two systems. What distinguished Stufe III was the long-drawn-out agony of those condemned to it. The purpose was to make the inmate suffer the maximum before death came as a merciful release. None of this implies that a camp classified Stufe I was less technologically advanced than others. Even lowly Dachau had its gas chamber and its crematorium, and camps of every category were engaged in medical experiments. Like medieval universities, they had their specialities. For typhus, it was Buchenwald and

14 CLASSIFICATION AND STRATIFICATION

Auschwitz; for sterilization, Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, Flossenbürg, and Buchenwald; for experiments on twins, Auschwitz; for the effects of freezing temperatures and high altitude, Dachau; for surgical operations, Gusen and Dachau; for tuberculosis, Gusen and Dachau; for cancer, Auschwitz; for bone transplants, Ravensbrück; and for malaria, Dachau.4 At the centre of all this scientific research was the SS medical academy in Graz. When an SS physician was not engaged in such experiments, there was always some other work to do, or services to render. Lieutenant-Colonel Eleuterio Díaz Tendero, of the Spanish Republican Army, was in an advanced state of tuberculosis when he arrived in Sachsenhausen. He was transferred to Dachau, where he was at once given a fatal injection of phenol in the heart.5 At Flossenbürg, Dr Schmidt had a mania for operating. Any prisoner who asked for an aspirin or complained of pain in any part of the body would discover that Dr Schmidt’s remedy in all cases was to open the patient’s stomach, to practise his hand, as he put it.6 The anaesthetic used for such operations was called, by the SS and the prisoners alike, the Holznarkose, or wood narcotic. It consisted of the prisoners who served as hospital orderlies beating the patient on the head with his own wooden clog or similar object. When the patient had lost consciousness, the operation was ready to begin.7 What the SS doctors never did was care for the sick. The charts on page 16 describe the administrative structure of a KL, and the identification colours worn by every Kazettler.8 Every prisoner, on his arrival in a camp, received a classification by the Politische Abteilung in the form of a coloured triangle, which he wore, point downwards, on his camp jacket and trousers. In some camps, certain categories predominated. Before the war, Sachsenhausen, Flossenbürg, Gross-Rosen, and Mauthausen were all used primarily for Greens, and Sachsenhausen (with Neuengamme) continued in this role. But in general, the classifications were mixed. Although the classification Blue was intended for all stateless prisoners, in fact it was worn only by the Spanish Republicans and some stateless Russians. In selecting prisoners to fill the Kapo positions, the SS looked to the Greens and the Blacks, in that order, giving priority to Germans and Austrians9 though some of the Kapos were Poles.10 This was the situation in Mauthausen when the Spaniards arrived. Those who filled the Kapo positions were responsible only for the work units (Kommandos), and the term Kapo is not to be applied to those responsible for the Blocks. For their sleeping quarters, the Kapos were distributed throughout the camp, irregularly, so that one Block might have one and another Block five. They slept in the privileged section, closest to the entrance, with the Blockältester, the Blockschreiber, and the Friseur.11 None of these had his own room, but each had a mattress of fresh straw in his bunk, and even sheets. It was important for the three Block leaders to maintain good relations with the Kapos in their Blocks. They could never tell, from one day to the next, how long they would retain their posts, and if they lost them, they would find themselves at the mercy of the Kapos.

THE SS ARCHIPELAGO 15

Table 2

Triangle insignia worn by prisoner: Table 3

As for the triangles, they could even be exchanged. The shoemaker Josef Schweiger, with 18 previous convictions, entered Mauthausen with a Black triangle, but the shoes he made for Karl Schulz, the handicapped Gestapo chief, won him such favour that Schulz rewarded him with a Green. Once he could sport the proud emblem of a criminal on his vest, Schweiger later declared, everyone showed him respect and left him in peace.18 Schweiger the shoemaker belonged to the corps of service personnel known as the Prominenten, representing some 10 per cent or more of the prisoner population. A Konzentrationslager was a traffic in survival, from top to bottom. Those at the top could skim off all kinds of perquisites. Those at the bottom, who needed food the most because they were being worked to death in the quarry, received the least, including the thinnest of the soup, precisely because it reached them last. While the Prominenten did not enjoy all the privileges of the Kapos, they shared the most important: they were safe, however precariously, from extermination, and they were

16 CLASSIFICATION AND STRATIFICATION

free to move about the camp. They were also in direct contact with the SS officers, and in a position to identify them closely and to observe their conduct. These Prominenten included all those working in the offices, in the workshops, in the kitchens, in the stores, in the tailor’s shop, and in the shoeshop; servants of the SS and of the senior Kapos; assistants to the SS doctors, dentists, and pharmacists; barbers, Block orderlies, painters, chimney-sweeps, firemen, garage mechanics, and electricity and hydraulic workers.19 Like the Kapos, the Prominenten were drawn at first exclusively from the Greens and Blacks. But murderers, thieves and vagabonds were not likely to give satisfaction in such jobs; nor were surgeons, engineers, or skilled workers, who could serve as specialized assistants, to be found among the Blacks and Greens. Reluctantly, the administration turned to the Red triangles to fill the posts: first to the Germans and Austrians, and then to other nationals who understood German.20 In something of a special class were the camp’s prisoner-police, who were responsible for maintaining order in the alleys and for mustering the prisoners on the Appellplatz. Almost all of them were German; they carried sabres and wore the spiked helmets used by the German Army in the First World War. All the Kapos and the top Prominenten (down to the level of Blockältester) wore armbands. They might wear jacket and trousers or might continue to wear their Drillich, but their living conditions were strikingly different. A Prominenter would have his own bed in a two-bed bunk, again with sheets, changed every two weeks to the very end.21 Jorge Semprún, a survivor of Buchenwald, defines the secret of survival in terms of three factors: sufficient knowledge of spoken German, skill in a trade (or the pretence of having it), and pure luck. The rest of the KZ universe, over 85 per cent, were slaves condemned to die. Among the quickest to die were those placed in a Strafkompanie, and for the Jews there was virtually no hope of survival. A change in the character of KZ life could indeed be seen at about mid-point in the war, but overall it did not affect the chances of survival. In the early years the Nazis did not consider the use of their slaves in scientific terms; at the same time, they were prone, in the flush of victory, to express their sense of racial superiority more readily. Then came the German defeats at El Alamein and Stalingrad, and arrogance gave way to rage.

5 Opposing programmes Extenuation versus extermination

Even before El Alamein, the failure to take Moscow before winter set in, in 1941, had altered the character of the war. The German High Command saw that it would not be so simple a matter after all. This was evident in the decision taken on 30 April 1942 to establish a new organization, the SS-WVHA, headquartered at Berlin-Lichterfelde, with overall responsibility for the KL. Its command went to SSObergruppenführer Oswald Pohl, and his decisions were hereafter enforced on every KL commandant by SS-Brigadeführer Richard Glücks who, as head of Amt D, served as inspector-general of the camps.1 On the day of his appointment, Pohl wrote to Himmler: ‘The war has quite clearly changed the purpose of the KZ. Our task is now to redirect its functions towards the economic side.’ To the camp commandants, Pohl wrote: The camp commandant is the sole person responsible for the employment of the work-force. This employment must be total in the true sense of the word, in order to obtain the maximum output. There are to be no limits to working hours. The limits are to depend upon the type of work, and the hours are to be fixed by the commandant. All factors tending to reduce the work schedule must be limited to the maximum. The break for food at noon must be reduced to the very shortest period possible. The industrialization programme of the WVHA accelerated a development already under way: the creation of a constellation of subsidiary camps, known as Nebenlager.2 In the case of Mauthausen, the Nebenlager extended throughout all of Austria except the Tyrol, and even into Germany (at Passau) and Slovenia. These subsidiary camps, still administered by the mother camp (Hauptlager, Stammlager, or Mutterlager), were attached to one or other of the major industrial groups. In order to make these factories invulnerable to Allied bombing, the prisoners were put to work excavating hundreds of subterranean tunnels. The result was that most prisoners arriving in Mauthausen stayed there only for the quarantine period and what the SS called basic education. They would then be sent to any of the Nebenlager: the quarries at Gusen and Ebensee, the mines at Eisenerz, the oil refinery at Moosbierbaum, the agricultural factory at St Lambrecht, the SS school at Klagenfurt, the construction of dikes at Gross-Raming, the building of a tunnel into

18 OPPOSING PROGRAMMES

Yugoslavia at Loibl-Pass, and above all, to the arms factories. These included the Hermann Goering Werke in Linz, the Messerschmitt factory at Gusen (the largest in Austria),3 the Siemens plant at Ebensee, the Heinkel aircraft factories at Floridsdorf and Schwechat, the Daimler factory at Steyr, the Florians factory at Peggau, the Nibelungenwerke tank factories at St Valentin,4 and the missile experimental centre at Schlier.5 The camp commandants thus received a new title, Betriebsleiter, or industrial manager, and earned as such a second stipend, supplementary to the pay they received as camp commandant. But the new policy was not without its critics. If the WVHA represented the policy of realism, there were still the idealists in the RSHA who resented this interference in the policy of programmed extermination, especially where the Jews were concerned. It was, after all, only three months earlier, on 20 January 1942, that the top-level meeting at Grossen-Wannsee had decided upon the Endlösung, or final solution to the Jewish question. To those in the SS administration who thought it more important to liquidate the Jews and other enemies than to fight for victory (and by 1945 this faction would predominate), Pohl’s programme sounded like betrayal. But for the moment the realists had the upper hand over the idealists, and the Jews able to work would be allowed to work, and to work themselves to death. Pohl’s directives meant that the Reich was no longer to be denied the maximum output of every prisoner by the premature termination of his life. The average life expectancy of the KL Häftling was now calculated, in the carefully compiled tables of the central offices, at nine months. The average profit accruing from a slavelabourer’s nine months of life was calculated at RM 1631; this included on the credit side the average value of each prisoner’s confiscated property, and on the debit side the cost of feeding and clothing him, but the estimate, it was specifically stated, did not include the value of his bones and ashes. In actual practice, the various camp commandants intensified or attenuated the directives according to their individual temperament. An example of the wide range of their temperaments can be seen in the vivid contrast between the commandant of Mauthausen and the commandant of Dachau. Though operating under the same orders, the commandant at Dachau actually punished a Kapo in 1940 for savagely beating a Jewish prisoner. At Mauthausen, in the words of Karl Schulz, the Gestapo officer who was finally brought to trial, ‘such a proceeding was unthinkable’.6 Let it be said that in most cases the camp commandants intensified rather than attenuated the directives, and in most of the camps life expectancy was less than the prescribed nine months. The reasons for this are not hard to find. The SS and the Kapos continued to murder the prisoners, which they did in all manner of ways. These included beating them to death with their clubs, hurling them to death from the cliffs, and seizing their berets and throwing them on the wire, then forcing the prisoners to recover them, and be electrocuted or shot from the watchtowers in the process. To try to put an end to this regrettable violation of the rules, the Gestapo moved in with a solution. The Gestapo office in every camp now included an officer responsible for

THE SS ARCHIPELAGO 19

investigating every case of ‘unnatural death’, for opening proceedings against anyone charged with misconduct, and for submitting a report to the SS courts in Vienna (in the case of Mauthausen) and to the RSHA in Berlin. Such reports were indeed filed, and many escaped destruction at the end of the war. In every case, of course, they absolve the SS of responsibility in what is described as an attempt at escape, or an accident at work, or an act of suicide. Since the falsification of these reports was admitted to the Cologne Tribunal in 1966–7 by SS-Rottenführer Erich Walter Krüger,7 the reports serve only to reveal the bizarre workings of the SS mind, incapable even of taking pride in achievement. Where the WVHA showed genuine concern was the discovery, at the end of 1942, that the mortality rate showed no sign of decreasing. It responded with a letter to the senior medical officer of each Lager (with a copy for the information of the respective commandant), deploring the fact that of the 156 000 prisoners who had so far arrived in the camps, over 70 000 were already dead. At that rate, ran the letter, the total prison population would never reach the level desired by the ReichsführerSS. It should be remembered, the letter concluded, that the best doctor is not the one who distinguishes himself for his severity, but the one who preserves the working capacity of the prisoner for the longest possible time. Sound medical opinion at this point would have proposed an increase in the food supply. Occasionally this desperate remedy was adopted, but with little or no effect, since the supplementary rations usually fell victim to the rapacity of the SS or the Kapos. Well might it be said that the Lager by now was a mechanism that functioned according to its own logic. The Reichsführer-SS himself seems to have taken a middle position between the ‘realists’ and the ‘idealists’. In 1943 he still raged against the high mortality rates, and on 15 May of that year his subordinates, Pohl and Glücks, issued an order providing for rewards to prisoners who behaved well and performed well.8 But in 1944 Himmler showed indifference, no doubt consoled by then, by the apparently inexhaustible supply of slave labour from every corner of Europe. This explains why he allowed his underling, the Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller, to issue a decree on 4 March 1944 in defiance of the WVHA. All military personnel who escaped and were recaptured were to be sent in the strictest secrecy (not therefore by train) to Mauthausen, and only Mauthausen, there to be executed on arrival by a bullet in the back of the neck. It was the birth of the Kugel- Aktion, the practice of stamping the prisoner’s papers with the letter K; when he arrived at Mauthausen, he was not entered in the registry or given a number but promptly murdered. Müller’s directive was endorsed four months later by none other than Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel, the timocratic chief of staff of the honour-loving Wehrmacht. Keitel was already responsible for signing the ‘Nacht und Nebel’ decree in December 1941.9 Now in the ‘Kugel Erlass’ of 27 July 1944, he ordered that, with the exception of Britons and Americans, any prisoner of war, whatever his rank, who was recaptured after attempting to escape was to be handed over to the Sicherheitsdienst. Total silence was to be maintained, and the Wehrmacht records were to show that the escaped prisoner had not been recaptured.10

20 OPPOSING PROGRAMMES

If Himmler could contemplate an ever-increasing supply of manpower, it was a very different matter for Keitel. In 1943 the Wehrmacht faced a shortage in the ranks that grew steadily worse. Among other things, this meant a reduction in the number of SS guards and ultimately their replacement by Luftwaffe and other elements. The manpower shortage gave the Greens (and others) the opportunity to serve in the Wehrmacht. The vast majority of the prisoners remained in the camps, and for them, in the final year of the war, the pace of construction moved to breakneck even by the standards of the SS. The Nazis knew that their last hope was to build superior weapons, and this race against time meant a staggering increase in the death rate, but not, ironically, for the Spaniards, who paid most heavily in the first two years.

6 Everyday life in the KZ

Much has been said of the impact on the prisoner’s mind on the day of arrival, when he passed through the Effektenkammer on his way to the disinfection room and the quarantine Block. The SS would sit behind a long row of tables, with prisoners serving as their assistants. At the first table the incoming prisoner would surrender his identity cards; then at the next his money; then his ring, watch, medals, and other valuables; then the rest of the contents of his pockets, including letters and photos; then the contents of his bags; then his clothes and his shoes. Clothing included all bandages; if a man was wearing a hernia bandage he might also be told to jump.1 He had now reached the end of the line, naked and bereft of everything. Next came the Scherraum. The survivor Juan de Diego attests to the shock felt by the incoming prisoner as the Friseur took hold of his penis and shaved his testicles with a scalpel which might well be notched, while the Green Kapos would make fun of any prisoner with a small organ.2 Then the showers, with the Kapos as well as the SS on hand to administer the first breaking-in. The shower treatment, said another survivor, was to reduce the prisoners to the level of a flock of frightened sheep.3 The water would alternate from scalding to freezing, and if a prisoner were to break away the Kapos would beat him on the skull with their cudgels. After this he would enter the quarantine Block, where there were no bunks but only palliasses on the ground. These were filled with wood cuttings which were rarely changed, so that the cuttings were reduced to dust. Rations in the quarantine Block were reduced by half, in accordance with three principles: that those who do not work have less need to eat; that it helped to instil despair; and that the reduction helped to accelerate death’s progress among the dying. The quarantine period generally lasted a week to ten days. The prisoner would then enter his prescribed Block. Every Block was divided into two sections, Stube A to the left on entering and Stube B to the right. Between the two Stuben were the living quarters of the three privileged Prominenten (the Blockältester, the Blockschreiber, and the Blockfriseur), while on each side of them was the washroom of the respective Stube. Accommodation for the rest consisted of wooden cots on three and sometimes four levels, with less than half a metre between levels. The lower bunks were infected with the dirt and dust from the palliasses above, which fell into the mouth and eyes of those below. Those above had to clamber up over the others, and at reveille, when the prisoners lingered in sleep, those at the top were more likely to receive the blows of the Kapos than those

22 EVERYDAY LIFE IN THE KZ

at the bottom. Those at the top had the advantage that their bunks were inspected less thoroughly than those below, but they also suffered the disadvantage that in winter the cracks in the wood allowed the melting snow to enter from the roof, and the blanket was always damp. A prisoner dying in an upper bunk might well soil the bunks below; at such times it was not uncommon for the others to bang his head against the bedpost until he succumbed.4 Conditions were made worse by overcrowding. Mauthausen, intended originally for 3000 inmates,5 came to house 70 000, and Buchenwald, designed for 7000, accommodated up to 60 000. This meant that a Block with accommodation for 200 might house 1600—especially in the case of the quarantine Blocks—with no provision for additional washing or toilet facilities. Even the water ran short.6 Overcrowding, of course, did not mean squalor. ‘Eine Laus, dein Tod!’ was still the slogan that ruled, right up until the end when the SS cared only about killing.7 Until then, the SS operated in accordance with their paradox: a mania for hygiene, coupled with a delight in humiliation. Toilet paper was a commodity unknown in the latrines, and the carts carrying bread dragged by the inmates were the same that were used for the refuse.8 It might be expected that every survivor would remember, perhaps more than anything, the sound that broke the night. In fact, most survivors do not recall this clearly, partly because the first sounds heard were a medley that included the Kapos’ whistles, the thud of their batons, the screams and the groans, and partly because there was no interval between the first sound and the prisoner’s instant response. Other survivors remember the sound of a gong, though at Mauthausen it was the bell at the main gate, on the tower closest to the Danube. This Weckruf came at 4.45 a.m., the winter schedule being between 30 minutes and one hour in arrears. Rollcall followed at 5.15 a.m., at the end of which the Lagerältester would give the order: ‘Arbeitskommando formieren!’, which to many a prisoner meant ‘Let the massacre begin!’9 They would then scurry to their work detail, and work would begin at 6 a.m. Michel de Boüard remembers that most of the prisoners at Mauthausen working in the local or daily Kommandos, notably the quarry, did not leave the inner camp until 7 a.m.10 The truth of the matter is that the hour varied with the season and the weather: the SS were afraid of the dark, and only the inner camp was floodlit.11 Work then continued to 5.30 p.m., with 30 minutes to one hour at noon for roll-call and Eintopf, the midday meal consisting of a soup containing turnips and potatoes. Roll-call followed at 6 p.m. and soup at 7 p.m. Prisoners had to eat either standing up or on their bunks; they could never sit at a table or on a bench or stool, nor could they approach a stove, for these were the exclusive privileges of the Kapos and the Prominenten. The curfew for prisoners to return to their Blocks was set variously at 7.45 p.m. and 8.45 p.m., with lights out at 8 p.m. or 9 p.m.12 The daily food ration was set by Berlin at 2300–2400 calories. The Czech professor Dr Josef Podlaha, who as a Prominenter survived Mauthausen, observed that to survive in that camp a minimum of 3000 calories was necessary. Instead, the actual ration distributed was between 1000 and 1500 calories, and in the Revier, the

THE SS ARCHIPELAGO 23

antechamber of death, between 700 and 900 calories. Towards the end of the war, the daily calorie intake did not exceed 500.13 At its best then, the daily food ration represented barely 60 per cent of the daily physical expenditure. The gnawing, mind-consuming pain of hunger was at its greatest for the first hour after a meal, for the stomach had secreted too much gastric juice for the little sustenance it took in return. Such extreme hunger could lead to some bizarre excesses. Paul Tillard describes the feat of a Spaniard who, one Saturday afternoon, obtained access to the kitchen and in front of Tillard drank 11 litres of soup. The following day he drank another 17. There was, of course, nothing in the soup that filled.14 The Italian survivor Fabio Luppino recounts how hunger drove him to the point that, whenever he saw an SS, he was gripped with the desire to eat him, to chew his body; he had the same feeling when he saw an SS dog.15 Hunger would drive prisoners to suck on charcoal or chew on the tar-lined paper which they tore from the roofs of the Blocks, if only to have the sensation that they were eating something.16 Hunger did indeed consume the mind. Once again, everything had been carefully thought out at the highest level. Programmed hunger was to serve as the means to destroy not just intellectual ability but the reasoning faculty itself. The number of dead at the evening roll-call was generally greater than at the morning muster. It was common for those who had been carried back by two comrades from a daily Kommando to fall dead during the roll-call. This muster was as much a strain on the mind as on the body, since it consisted of a seemingly endless succession of orders on the same theme: Mützen ab, Mützen auf, the prisoners having to doff and don their caps with each order. Mauthausen, in this regard alone, was lenient: the average roll-call took only 30 minutes. But there were exceptions: sometimes the evening muster went on all night, and even the following day and night. The record at Mauthausen was 40 hours. On two such occasions the death toll reached 500. Food and water were denied, and the second time the temperature fell to −25°C.17 The effect on the legs of standing at attention for so long a period was to induce oedema. Many a prisoner died of it. Juan de Diego has described how the condition distorts the face as the bodily fluids drain from the head and the eye sockets sink. A survivor who contracted it reported that his legs swelled to three times their normal size, and that he lost sight of his knees as the swelling rose from his feet to his thighs.18 There was always the Revier for those who wished to report sick.19 The first step towards it would be for the Blockältester and the Blockschreiber to decide that a particular prisoner was not in a fit state to leave with the work detail. What the prisoner risked, whether he knew it or not, was the decree issued by Himmler in March 1941 which extended his euthanasia programme (first introduced in September 1939) to those KL prisoners who were ill for more than three months and those who were generally unfit to work.20 The Reichsführer’s solution to this problem was the practice known to the SS as the Himbeerpflücken or raspberry picking: the sick and disabled would be assembled, issued with tin-cans, taken to the periphery of the camp, ordered to pick the berries, and then shot ‘while attempting to escape’.21 The first lesson of survival in a KL was to avoid reporting sick.

24 EVERYDAY LIFE IN THE KZ

Sundays normally gave prisoners a day of rest,22 except those in the punishment squad (Strafkompanie) who worked as usual. If religion had been a reason, the SS would have picked Wotansday. The fact is simply that the SS were loath to forgo their own day off, and the SS guarding the Strafkompanie could be expected to be in a particularly ugly mood. Public hangings were carried out, on Himmler’s orders, by prisoners who would receive three cigarettes in payment,23 but whippings were generally administered by the SS and consisted of 25, 50, or 75 strokes. Sentences of 50 or 75 strokes were divided into sessions of 25 strokes each, to allow the prisoner to recuperate for one month while he contemplated the next session. Each session was entrusted to four or five SS, who turned it into an athletic contest. ‘Give me that; I’ll show you how to use it,’ one SS would say to another as he rolled up his sleeves.24 If they chose to wear gloves for the task, it could be, as Juan de Diego believes, that they found the work oddly humiliating for themselves. In each session the prisoner had to count the blows, in German; if he lost count, he began again, from ‘eins’. An SS doctor was present to ensure that all the legalities were respected, but a single beating could leave a prisoner marked for life and incapacitated for any manual work.25 This in turn would expose him to the charge of idleness, punishable by sentence to a Strafkompanie, or of uselessness, punishable by instant death in the gas chamber. Spanish survivors of Mauthausen remember in particular the incident concerning five Spaniards who were working with a steamroller in the Baukommando. They were accused, totally unjustly, of an act of sabotage when they were unable to prevent the steamroller from making a wrong manoeuvre. (Fifty men, it was said, could not have held it back.) The five prisoners were sentenced to 25 lashes each. At first the men gave out no cry, but by the end all had done so, except one. This prisoner, after the twenty-fifth stroke, drew himself to attention in front of the SS. He then returned, moving as best he could, to his Block 16, and there he fell on the floor and cried like a child. The Blockältester, the German green-triangle Franz, who was normally no different from any other Green, was moved to pity at the sight of it, and lent him help and the comfort of his bed. Two weeks later, the black and rotten flesh of his buttocks simply fell away from him.26 Did God see all this, and turn His eyes away? To the man of faith, Jew or Christian, never was it more tempting than now to move to the belief in the godless universe, or in a deistic universe in which God was coldly indifferent to the fate of His creation. Two of Mauthausen’s most distinguished survivors, Père Riquet and Simon Wiesenthal, both arriving at Mauthausen in early 1945, came to opposite conclusions, the former saying that never in his life did he need his faith as he needed it now,27 and the latter persuaded that faith was surely at variance with the dictates of reason.28 Indeed, in this environment, many prisoners simply lost the will to survive. Even men of great intellectual vigour and moral integrity lost interest in everything except food. A certain class, rejected by all Kommandos, went around the camp in rags, unshaven, filthy and sick, begging for food, stealing where they could, indifferent to everything, waiting for the freedom of death; death that never tarried, whether it took the form of the gas chamber, or came from a beating

THE SS ARCHIPELAGO 25

by some Kapo, or from inanition in some dark corner. What marked them as a class was the blanket they carried over their heads or shoulders. It earned them the name of Mohammedans (Muselmänner), a name invented in Auschwitz which then spread throughout the KZ universe.29 Juan de Diego points out that at Mauthausen these vagabond derelicts were few indeed: they might be seen on Sundays, but not in any number, and not for long, for the gas chamber clamoured for its fill.30 On the matter of survival, Michel de Boüard, himself a very distinguished survivor, writes of the prisoner’s sudden realization of the difference between social standing and the sense of personal worth. Those who had the first and not the second were quickly thrown into the deepest despair, and very few survived. Often the filthiest and most wretched were those who had lost their social standing and their privileges. Boüard considers it a class reaction: most members of the business bourgeoisie, the military, and the intelligentsia adopted this passive attitude, awaiting liberation from the outside: the fight was over for them. The individualist was equally one of the great losers in this ultimate test of character, in which the truly strong instinctively inclined to community life and organized action.31 Montserrat Roig points out that, in the French camps, the worker had held a natural advantage over the petit bourgeois, and the agricultural worker over the urban. In the Nazi camps, there was no such advantage. Fate was determined by morale, and morale depended upon solidarity and collective defence.32 A Spanish survivor writes that the only way to survive was not to let the mind dwell on the atrocities of the day and to keep calm and vigilant.33 Another recalls that it was important, whenever struck, never to fall to the ground: ‘If you fell, it was usually the end; you would be beaten worse, or kicked, and incapacitated.’34 To keep calm and vigilant in the face of this daily horror was indeed the supreme test of character. The back-breaking work continued whether it rained or snowed, in scorching sun or icy wind. The purpose was to exterminate through work, on the logical basis that the system enjoyed a virtually inexhaustible supply of slaves. Fear and anxiety, perpetual anguish, solitude in a world of hostile elements. The prisoner denied the dearest thing of all: a letter from home. ‘No one knew anything of us,’ remarks a survivor, ‘nor we of them.’35 These were the forces at work in this universe at once terrifying and absurd, in which all civilized norms were uprooted. In his physical and moral degradation, each prisoner was intended to represent for all others a figure of loathsomeness; each was meant to see himself as an object of pure disgust, for which he could feel he was justly punished. Thus reduced to docile servitude, deprived of all personal identity, the prisoner would accept with animal indifference whatever fate lay in store for him. The immense nervous tension under which he lived robbed him of whatever will he had. It is this that explains why prisoners about to be executed, whether singly or in groups, never tried to resist. It is this that also explains why 2000 desperate prisoners working in a quarry did not at a given signal rush the SS guards. It would require organization. Any such plan would become known to those passive prisoners who would willingly betray the plan to the Kapos in exchange for a Kapo post or some other privilege. The very idea of a revolt was at variance with the nature of an SS camp. The prisoner on his

26 EVERYDAY LIFE IN THE KZ

arrival had lost everything he had, down to the hair on his body. Nothing was left to him but his gold teeth, and these would be removed from his body on the way from the gas chamber to the crematorium. Everything was done to make him feel he was worth nothing, less even than the rock he carried. And like the rock, it crushed him into mindless passivity. The Italian survivor Primo Levi presented, just before his suicide in 1987, a harrowing thesis that the survivors were in the main not the best but the worst: the selfish, the violent, the insensitive.36 Such extreme pessimism on Levi’s part was no doubt linked to the depression that killed him; the evidence is fortunately stronger on the other side. Perhaps the secret of survival in this implacable world was this: to concentrate upon one tiny act of resistance, or if that were impossible, to construct some little corner—if not of tangible form, then a corner of the mind—where nothing could intrude upon human dignity, a corner proof against all pressures to conform, all efforts to degrade. Certainly those who fought to survive felt less isolated, and not feeling isolated was the key to everything. Hence the vital importance of the sense of community. The supreme human virtue may well be cheerfulness in adversity. A smile, a kind word at morning, the sharing of a piece of bread, could have a significance far beyond the gesture, and could well make the difference, to donor and recipient alike, between bowing to fate and fighting it through another day.

7 Oranienburg, Buchenwald and Mauthausen compared

What we have discussed so far could apply to almost any of the 16 Konzentrationslager. What remains is to examine the specific camps to which the Spanish prisoners were sent, ranging from Oranienburg to Mauthausen. In any comparison with the rest of the system, KL-Oranienburg was a dream; a survivor called it ‘a model camp, human and gentle’,1 but strictly in reference to the others. Its most famous Spanish inmate, the former socialist prime minister Largo Caballero, survived it, but died a premature death. Buchenwald too had its Spanish inmate of renown, the future novelist and Minister of Culture Jorge Semprún.2 Like others, Semprún was to remark on the camp’s peculiar setting. The hill surrounding it, known as the Ettersberg, is situated only a few miles north of Goethe’s Weimar. All but one of the trees that covered it had been cut down. The great oak they chose to spare was none other than the famous tree in whose shade Goethe used to rest in his walks with Eckermann, the spot where they would sit and talk and ponder, perchance, on the future of Germany. That same tree now stood inside KLBuchenwald, ‘forest of beeches’, on the esplanade between the Effektenkammer and the kitchens.3 Here amid Thuringia’s greenery, which could be taken for the heart of Germany itself, source of the life-affirming philosophy of its greatest poetic genius, even here nature was uprooted and overturned. As the entering prisoners passed through the iron gate, with its inscription ‘Jedem das seine’ (‘To each his own’), and saw the hills of their lost freedom stretching for miles in front of them, two monuments were there to greet them, to which every prisoner had to turn eyes left in salute. There, on a lofty plinth, stood a giant statue in stone of the German eagle, its wings outstretched. Then, on similar supports, two groups of statues that stood face to face: on the right, a priest, a monk, and a Jew in vulgar caricature, and on the left, four SS taking aim.4 Buchenwald had other particularities.5 A feature of its everyday life was the sound of the ‘singing-horses’, the four-man teams of prisoners dragging the rock-filled carts and forced to sing as they pulled. These were not the only sounds. Ettersberg became known as ‘the hill which the birds forsook’, for the shouts, shrieks, groans, and screams emanating from the camp forced even the birds to change their habitat. The birds did not fly at Dora either. This subsidiary of Buchenwald, set in the Harz Mountains a few miles from Nordhausen, opened in September 1943 as an underground factory for the production of Hitler’s Vergeltungswaffen (V1s and V2s). Working from 12 to 14 hours a day in damp, dark

28 THE SS ARCHIPELAGO

tunnels, and sleeping there, the prisoners did not see the sky or breathe fresh air for months on end. It was nevertheless Mauthausen to which 90 per cent of the Spanish prisoners were sent and which will be forever associated with the cause of the Spanish Republic. Mauthausen has been called the most mysterious of Nazi camps, on the grounds that not even in Germany, and still less by the Allies, was its reality suspected.6 The thesis is questionable: the same source tells us that Austrian civilians called it Totenberg and Mordhausen, and that its system of watch-tower lights was never turned off, not even during Allied air attacks.7 But the matter lies outside our purview. It was certainly intended to be a model camp, a depository for the incorrigible enemies of National Socialism, and it was the only camp to be built in stone. It was also the first camp to be built outside Germany, the first to receive nonGermans, and the very last to be liberated. This was the logical result of its geographical position, at the farthest point from the invading armies. The place that has been called by a survivor and author ‘unimaginable to Dante’ sits on a hill that bathes its feet in the Danube, 25 kilometres downstream from Linz. The little village to the east, almost at the confluence of the Danube and the Enns, was noted for its calm and its little inns.8 Mozart himself remarked on its beauty, when he stayed there overnight with his parents on the way to Vienna. Another of Austria’s sons looked at the region through different eyes, seeing Linz, close to his birthplace in Braunau, as the future industrial and cultural capital of the thousand-year Reich. Halfway up the hill at Mauthausen lies the largest granite quarry in Austria. Originally it belonged to the city of Vienna, hence its name Wienergraben, but in the wake of the Anschluss a law transferred its entire ownership to the SS, under the name of Deutsche Erdund Steinwerke (DEST) in Berlin; the little Messerschmitt factory built on the site in 1943 was to be the only industrial unit established at Mauthausen proper.9 Immediately following the transfer, a labour Kommando was sent to the quarry from KL-Dachau, made up almost entirely of common criminals (Greens),10 and in April, Himmler and Pohl inspected the quarries and decided they were suited to the creation of a KL.11 The particular climate of Mauthausen was no doubt also a favourable factor: in less than two hours it can pass from scorching sun to rain and cold.12 The first mention of KL-Mauthausen in operation came in July 1938. Its first inmates were Austrians,13 soon followed by Czechs, and it is they who began the construction of the fortress. With the water system functioning at the end of 1942, KL-Mauthausen was by then essentially completed. But by that time the flood of new arrivals was far more than the camp could house, or use. In spite of the rising mortality, the population in 1943 doubled, then tripled, and in 1945 it was six times the population of 1942.14 The camp registry shows that the total number of prisoners who had entered up until April 1945 was about 139 000,15 and by the very end, 156 000.16 But these figures are in no way comprehensive. In the early years, incoming prisoners received the same registration numbers as those who had died. Those who arrived bearing the code letter K (for Kugel) in their transit papers were executed on arrival, as we have seen, and if their name was entered in error in

ORANIENBURG, BUCHENWALD AND MAUTHAUSEN COMPARED 29

Table 4

the registry, the name was erased and the number was given to the next prisoner to enter.17 In the last weeks countless thousands arrived in the evacuation convoys from east, north, and west. Hans Maršálek gives the figure of 206 000 (of whom 110 000 died).18 Vilanova estimates the number who entered Mauthausen between 8 August 1938 and 5 May 1945 at 350000 (of whom 285 000 died, including 11 525 in April 1945 alone).19 A commission of ex-prisoners tried to calculate the exact number of dead, but was unable to offer positive conclusions. An official Austrian study arrived at a total of 127 767.20 Finally, a study of life expectancy of all categories of prisoners in Mauthausen came up with the following approximate estimates:21 Though the number of SS assigned to Mauthausen and its Nebenlager increased with the rise of the inmate population, proportionately it declined. In February 1940 there were 1250 SS, including 460 in Mauthausen proper and 600 in Gusen, or one SS for every ten prisoners.22 By the summer of 1944 the proportion had widened to one SS for every 15 prisoners. On 1 January 1945, there were 5562 SS to guard 72 392 male prisoners, and 65 SS women to guard 959 women prisoners. It should be mentioned that at that time there were more prisoners—and more SS— at Mauthausen than in all but two camps in the KL archipelago.23 In April 1945, at its apogee, the SS garrison stood at 5984.24 The total number of SS who served in the Mauthausen complex at some time or other during its existence, according to the SS administrators who survived and were interrogated, was about 15 000.25 The majority were German or Austrian with some Croats26 and a few Romanians. While it is often assumed that camp garrisons were staffed only by Allgemeine SS, it should be borne in mind that an indeterminate number were on loan from Waffen SS units.27 In the case of Mauthausen, its commandant Franz Ziereis stated on his death-bed that between 4000 and 5000 of his guards belonged to the Totenkopfverbände, with the remainder made up of former Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe personnel.28

8 The survival of the evidence

In 1985, on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the liberation of Mauthausen, the University of Vienna began issuing questionnaires to survivors who attended any of the remembrance ceremonies held throughout Austria. The question could be asked, ‘Why did the University wait 40 years to begin?’ The bigger question, though it finds a facile answer, is why the Western world went to sleep after Nuremberg on the question of Nazi crimes. Many a survivor of Mauthausen, as elsewhere, has published his or her account, often adding to the individual personal experience a mass of hearsay information gathered afterwards, oblivious to the fact that it is his own experience, in every detail possible, that is of real value to history.1 The most complete records, of course, were once in existence. An index card was made out on every single new arrival in camp, with the exception of the K prisoners, but even here their transit papers would still have been filed. After the capture of Vienna by the Red Army on 13 April 1945, the SS used the last fires of the crematorium to burn their archives, and for a whole day, fragments of burned paper rained down on the camp.2 Then, on 2 May, one day before companies of the Vienna fire brigade arrived to mount guard outside the camp, the gas chamber was dismantled and partly destroyed, together with the crematorium and the instruments of torture, while those who had worked in the crematorium (the ‘Kohlenfahrer’) were shot.3 The SS could thereby expect what their colleagues expected everywhere else, that no precise historical record could ever be put together on the crimes committed in their camp.4 What chance was there of compiling any accurate account, when most prisoners were known to others only by their first name or nickname, when each prisoner moved only in his own unit, and when no one ever had a pencil and paper available to make notes on this constant and enormous flux? Paper was very difficult to procure, and it was strictly forbidden to keep the smallest written note. To be perfect, however, the SS needed to shoot three prisoners, all Spaniards, who held the keys to reassembling an important part of the records of the camp. They failed to do this, and as a result, in the words of Vilanova, ‘all accounts regarding the prison population of the KL are merely guesses, except in the case of the Spaniards in Mauthausen’.5 The SS in Mauthausen, as elsewhere, kept two separate sets of records. One of these was the general camp records housed in the Lagerschreibstube in Block 1. This collection included a card on each prisoner, with basic data and his record in the

THE SS ARCHIPELAGO 31

camp. To maintain this collection the SS employed two prisoners (later three) as Lagerschreiber, or clerks. No secret copy of any part of this collection was made, and the entire collection was destroyed by the SS in the days before the Liberation. The other set of records was housed in the offices of the Politische Abteilung (Gestapo), which had a compound outside the fortress consisting of eight or nine rooms. This collection also included a card on every prisoner; while it duplicated the basic data it excluded the prisoner’s current camp record but included his earlier history, notably the reasons for his being in Mauthausen and his address in the country where he was arrested. Here too the SS employed prisoners to assist in the work.6 Fate ordained that the choice of the SS, on 16 March 1941, was a Spaniard from Catalonia, Casimir Climent Sarrión. The choice was not haphazard: Climent had a working knowledge of German, and had been an officer in the Spanish Republican Army. In France he had been conscripted into a Compagnie de travailleurs, and was taken prisoner on 20 June 1940. Sent first to Stalag XI-B, he was transferred to Mauthausen on 23–5 November 1940, in the company of 46 other Spaniards.7 In his post as clerk in the Politische Abteilung, Climent was engaged with others in maintaining the vast catalogue that amounted finally to 180 000 cards.8 It is quite possible that the real reason Climent was selected was the realisation by the SS that the Spanish entries in the catalogue were in serious disorder: the Spanish use of both parents’ surnames and the arbitrary omission of a weak patronym by the bearer (a common practice in Spain) had created real confusion. In any event, Climent was put in exclusive charge of the Spanish card index, which was now kept separate from the general catalogue. In this work he was later assisted by another Catalan, Josep Bailina, of no political affiliation. Climent’s own political affiliation was centrist, which explains his later actions. His work allowed him considerable independence, and as a result he could, and did, make a complete second set of cards for himself, as well as a copy of other lists of incoming convoys and transfers to the Kommandos. Moreover, Climent was responsible for filing the Gestapo’s correspondence with whatever organization might inquire about a Spaniard who it believed was interned in Mauthausen. Such organizations included the International Red Cross, the Spanish Embassy in Berlin, the Spanish consulates in Vienna, Munich, Paris, and elsewhere, and the Falange Exterior in Berlin, Paris, and its many branch offices. Climent then faced the stupendous problem of preserving a collection that ultimately weighed about 14 kg. He could not get it out of the Gestapo compound, nor hide it in a cellar, on the roof, or in the furniture. His solution was marvellously simple. He hid it in the boxes of paper and index cards in the stockroom. When, on 2 May 1945, Karl Schulz, the Gestapo officer responsible for the Politische Abteilung, ordered all documents to be burned, none of the SS thought that the stores of paper and index cards could be in any way incriminating, and while all else was destroyed, Climent’s collection, with its precise record of 4765 Spanish dead,9 was saved. Among the first Allied troops to reach Mauthausen was Sergeant Benjamin B.Ferencz, a war crimes investigator for the US Army, arriving there on 10 May.

32 THE SURVIVAL OF THE EVIDENCE

Since he knew Hungarian he was able to communicate with the Hungarian women survivors. Writing in 1979, Ferencz described his meeting with an inmate registrar (‘whose name I shall never know’) who greeted him with joy, then left the barrack and returned a few minutes later with a soiled box. The box contained a complete record and picture of every SS man who had ever been in Mauthausen, a gift of inestimable value to a war crimes prosecutor at Nuremberg. The former prisoner explained that one of his jobs had been to type identification cards for the SS guards. When the guards were reassigned, the card was to be destroyed, but the prisoner had found a way to save the cards from destruction, putting them in a box and burying it carefully in a field. ‘I was moved,’ writes Ferencz, ‘by the blind faith which inspired the unknown prisoner to risk his life in the conviction there would come a day of reckoning.’10 It is remarkable that Ferencz did not later identify his benefactor, who was none other than Climent Sarrión.11 Ferencz thus brings to light an aspect of Climent’s work that is not recorded elsewhere. Apart from the two sets of prisoner records of the SS (one destroyed, one saved), there was a third and secret record, compiled as a handwritten list by Climent with the help of his compatriot Juan de Diego, from the time he became the Dritte Lagerschreiber. Both men moved around the camp, between Block 1 inside the fortress and the Politische Abteilung outside, and thus were in a position to collaborate. What they drew up between them was a list of every Spanish inmate, with information that neither of the SS collections contained: the address in Spain of every prisoner, compiled by asking the information from each inmate or his companions. This list was concealed by Climent with the rest of his treasures,12 and after the Liberation was to be of vital help in the task of informing the families of those who did not return. As with Climent’s duplicate card index, it filled suitcases, but Climent took them with him when he left Mauthausen, and with the help of Juan de Diego and others, a list was typed up (original and seven copies) that ran to 360 sheets.13 The list was finally published in the 1977 work of Montserrat Roig. Juan de Diego had a further contribution to make, both to historiography and to the cause of justice. The Politische Abteilung kept a register called the Unnatürliche Todesfälle (Of Unnatural Deaths). However commonplace such deaths might be, it did not alter the SS mania for tidy records; in every case of violent death, a report was entered and signed by the SS member responsible, or by a witness to the deed. In the closing days when the SS records were being burnt, the German Red Gerhard Kanthack, who had once been a government official and now worked in the Politische Abteilung, managed to remove the book and wedged it inside a cupboard. Not daring to remove it from the compound, Kanthack begged de Diego, who had free access to the compound, to take it out himself. De Diego did so, concealing it in his jacket and then hiding it in the Lagerschreibstube, where there were more possibilities for concealment. On the day of liberation, de Diego handed the book to an American officer and asked for his name. He still retains the piece of paper which the American gave him, on which was written: ‘General commanding 3rd US Army, Judge Advocate Section, War Crimes Commission (APO 403, US Army)’. Later the book apparently fell into oblivion, because at the

THE SS ARCHIPELAGO 33

time that the Cologne trial of 1966–7 was in preparation, de Diego wrote to the prosecuting attorney in Cologne drawing his attention to the existence of the book.14 It was retrieved, and for saving it, de Diego later received a letter of gratitude from Michael S.Bernstein of the US Department of Justice.15 The third source of incriminating evidence was ultimately the most damaging to the SS, deriving as it did from the Erkennungsdienst, or photographic laboratory. Every SS camp had one, but only Mauthausen—and Mauthausen of all places—had prisoner-assistants with the tenacity to preserve a major part of the evidence. The terror felt by the SS that any photograph depicting atrocities could reach the outside world was revealed at Buchenwald in 1939 when the attempt was made and they vented their fury on the Kommando Kapo, Alfred Opitz, a German Red from Leipzig. Opitz was thrown into a prison cell, and after manifold tortures he was strangled to death by a certain Sommer, the SS adjutant responsible for the Bunker.16 At Mauthausen, on the other hand, the two Spaniards employed in its Erkennungsdienst, Antonio García Alonso and Francesc Boix Campo, each in his separate way, succeeded in safeguarding some 200 photographs. When at the end of the war the SS gave the order to burn every last piece of material in the laboratory, the order was scrupulously enforced, and when the Allied investigators arrived they found not a single trace of evidence. But thanks to the courage of García and Boix, the former in printing an extra copy and the latter in removing the prints to safety, the evidence remained.

Plate 1 Lagerkommandant Ziereis with members of Mauthausen’s SS staff, possibly all medical doctors. From left to right: Dr Erich Wasitzky, an unidentified Obersturmführer, Ziereis, Dr Eduard Krebsbach, an unidentified Obersturmführer, an unidentified Untersturmführer. Photograph by SS-Hauptscharführer Paul Ricken; by courtesy of USHMM.

34 THE SURVIVAL OF THE EVIDENCE

Plate 3 Reichsführer-SS Himmler and staff visit Mauthausen, 27 April 1941. At left, Lagerältester Helmut Schwarz; in foreground, Mauthausen’s Schutzhaftlagerführer Bachmayer; at rear, with white collar, Kaltenbrunner. Photograph by SS-Hauptscharführer Paul Ricken; DWP Collection.

Plate 2 Ziereis with members of his SS non-commissioned staff. From left to right: unidentified, Karl Struller, Eugen Noky, Ziereis, Leinwather, Killermann. Photograph by SSHauptscharführer Paul Ricken; by courtesy of USHMM.

THE SS ARCHIPELAGO 35

Plate 4 SS dignitaries visit Mauthausen, date uncertain. Photograph by SS-Hauptscharführer Paul Ricken; by courtesy of Přemysl Dobiáš.

Plate 5 Himmler (in group facing camera) and Kaltenbrunner (back oblique to camera) with other high-ranking SS officers on the main road between Linz and Mauthausen, date uncertain. Photograph by SS-Hauptscharführer Paul Ricken; by courtesy of Přemysl Dobiáš.

36 THE SURVIVAL OF THE EVIDENCE

Plate 6 Kaltenbrunner in Mauthausen reviewing an SS guard, date uncertain. Photograph by SS-Hauptscharführer Paul Ricken; by courtesy of Přemysl Dobiáš.

Plate 7 The execution at Mauthausen of Hans Bonarewitz, 29 July 1942. Leading the camp gypsy orchestra, Karl (‘the Kapellmeister’) Maierhofer. To the left, his head turned towards the camera, Juan de Diego. To his right, Felipe Yébenes Romo. To his left, Casimir Climent Sarrión, Josep Llombard Xincho, unidentified, unidentified, Eduardo Muñoz Orts, Manuel Carmona Herrera. Photograph by SS-Hauptscharführer Paul Ricken; DWP Collection.

THE SS ARCHIPELAGO 37

Plate 8 The little museum in Gusen I which was the pride of Ziereis. It included ancient relics discovered during the construction of the Gusen-St Georgen railway, together with human skins, skulls and body parts. Photographer unknown; by courtesy of Martha Gammer.

Plate 9 The Reichsführer-SS on a visit to Mauthausen, date uncertain. From left to right; Kaltenbrunner, Ziereis, Himmler, Chmielewski (behind Himmler to his left), Eigruber (in black), Bachmayer. Photograph by SS-Hauptscharführer Paul Ricken; by courtesy of USHMM.

38 THE SURVIVAL OF THE EVIDENCE

Plate 10 An underground factory in the Bergwerk Seegrotte (Hinterbrühl bei Mödling), producing the world’s first single-engine jet fighter, Heinkel He-162. Photographer unknown; by courtesy of Hans H.Rau, Vienna.

THE SS ARCHIPELAGO 39

Plate 11 Bachmayer touring the camp; prisoners stop work to doff their caps. Photograph by SS-Hauptscharführer Paul Ricken; by courtesy of USHMM.

Part II Mauthausen, Category Three

Ob Tag, ob Nacht, stets bedacht. Der Glocke Ruf erklingt. —Ein Zeichen, Deine Pflicht beginnt.*

41

1 The arrival

The train clanked to a bumping halt in an unknown place. Not one of us who saw the station’s name could recognize it. It was half-past-one in the morning. The long nightmare, we thought, was at an end. We had sat, crouched, sprawled, or stood, up to 140 to a freight-car, without food or water, shivering in a temperature of 20 degrees below freezing. The train had barely stopped when the bolts of the doors were pulled out, the doors pulled back, and there before us were the SS, a hundred of them, with huge snarling dogs. ‘Kanaken, ‘raus!’ came the screams of the guards, who at once sent us back to drag out the sick and the dead. Then they began to strike us with their cudgels and rifle butts as they pulled us to the ground. We dropped on to snow which reached our knees, pressing it to our mouths. Some of us had no shoes. Carrying the few possessions we had, we ran the gauntlet through the blows and the bites until we reached the assembly point on the station platform. ‘¡Hijos de puta!’, ‘¡Maricones!,’ the Spaniards were saying. The Germans did not understand, but now let loose a barrage of insults at the Spaniards, who replied, unseen by the SS, with the forearm signal. ‘Angetreten!’ We formed up in fives. There we were counted and recounted. Then, ‘Im Gleichschritt, marsch!’ We set off in quick march, a row of SS on each pavement, the dogs behind, down the road that leads from the station to the village. Because of the cold and the poor condition of many of the prisoners, we were ordered to march arm in arm, but our feet still slid on the ice-covered cobblestones. Our eyes searched for a light in the houses, perhaps a face. A Gasthaus stood almost opposite the station,1 but it was in darkness. The dogs went on baying and nipping at the ankles of the two outer ranks, who soon envied those in the middle three. At the bottom of a short hill we reached a small triangular park, where the road swung sharply to the right. We passed another Gasthaus, that faced the Danube,2 and then we stopped. Alberto the interpreter announced: ‘We are crossing the village. Anyone who stops or mounts the pavement will be shot on the spot’ We crossed the silent village. A church on the left, another on the right. Catholic Austria is not pagan Germany, it seemed to say. In the centre of the village, where the road forked, we scarcely glimpsed the baroque oddity of the building as we moved through at a now rapid pace. ‘Dalli, dalli!’ (‘Get moving!’) The formation had broken from fives into twos. The SS, who seemed to bark more ferociously than the dogs, began to beat those who lagged. We

THE ARRIVAL 43

stopped again as Alberto announced: ‘We have three kilometres to go. Anyone not keeping up will be shot. Anyone who tries to escape will be eaten alive by the dogs.’ Jaime, with some view of the road ahead, noticed an apple in the gutter and bent down quickly to scoop it up. A guard saw him, pulled him from the file, and beat him brutally before shoving him back into the ranks. We reached a hill, but the pace did not slacken. ‘Wollt ihr laufen, ihr faulen Hunde! ihr Drecksäcke!’ We were indeed running. Paco staggered and dropped the package he was carrying. Two guards fell on him, pulled him from the ranks and began to beat him by the side of the road, in full view of the prisoners behind, as though they would beat him to death. We were gripped in fear now. Would we all die here on the road? We reached a turn and saw the silhouette of a massive fortress above us.3 We continued to climb, passing a crucifix, and beside it, a post with a skull and crossbones painted in white on its dark base. Finally we arrived at the top of the hill, and caught a glimpse in the moonlight of rails and tip-trucks. The SS ordered us back into fives. In front of us stood the main gate, Mongol in style, with its huge wooden doors which opened as we approached. We passed between the granite pagoda-like towers, under the arch. We had arrived in Mauthausen. All of us but seven: the seven who had died in the four kilometres between the station and the camp.4 As we passed through the gates, we had some notion to our right of a granite wall with iron rings. We would learn soon enough what it meant. For those prisoners whose interrogation went badly, their first experience of Mauthausen was to be chained there at the Klagemauer for 24 or 48 hours without food or water. In front of us was the parade ground, covered with ice. The searchlights from the perimeter made it bright as day. The SS barked their orders, followed again by ‘Dalli, dalli!’, and we were driven into the area between the washroom and the fortress wall, with our faces to the washroom, and the SS and their dogs behind us.5 Men in striped suits, their heads shaved, counted and recounted us. They were the Kapos, all of them wearing a green or black triangle. At the order of an SS officer, a Kapo asked, ‘Are there any Jews?’ One Jew stepped forward. The Kapos rushed to beat him to the ground with their cudgels, while the SS smiled. Then another interpreter, a Spanish-speaking German called Enriquito, came toward us. ‘Mariconas!’6 he began. We were all exhausted, but his first word left us open-mouthed with astonishment. It was not in the normal run of malapropisms, and it sounded the more idiotic in the mouth of a man so effeminate in speech and manner. In spite of our sufferings, or perhaps because of them, we felt like laughing, and we did. ‘Little Spanish Reds,’ Enriquito went on, more irate than before, ‘you have just entered Mauthausen. You have come to work and obey. There will be no protests of the kind you’re used to. Don’t ask for anything. Everything here is forbidden. And here you’re going to pay me back for everything. You kept me in prison in Montjuich for two years, and now you’re going to pay dearly for it, because not one of you—do you hear that?—not one of you is going to get out of here alive.’ He lifted his arm, and with his index finger pointed to the chimney of the crematorium. ‘You see that smoke? That’s what we’re going to turn you into!’7

44 MAUTHAUSEN, CATEGORY THREE

We were ordered to undress. Even in the bitter cold, we were still sweating from the climb up the hill with our bags. For half an hour we stood waiting, naked in the snow. Then we were herded into the first building on the right. The SS relieved us of whatever possessions we had brought. A clerk made a note of every item taken. Those were the orders. Every item was to be returned to us when we left. Only we were also told that we would never leave. It was to be our first lesson in the way the system contradicted itself. Every detail had to be in order, if only to observe the principle.8 We were then jabbed, shoved, or kicked towards the enormous showerroom, sparkling in cleanness and light, where we showered with buckets.9 Then came the shaving of all our body hair: skull, beard, moustache, armpits, chest, groin, and legs, with a razor that scraped rather than cut. The shaven parts were doused with phenol. A disinfectant, they called it, but it caused such pain in the armpits and the groin that we had to walk with our arms held up and our legs splayed. The reaction of the prisoners would give any observer the impression that he had just entered a lunatic asylum. The same carbolic acid was daubed on open wounds, causing the men to scream or faint. Next came the medical examination. A prisoner pointed out to a clerk that he had a wound in the lung, no doubt hoping that he would be given light work. A veteran whispered never to say that here: it was the quickest route to the gas chamber. We would find out later, to our astonishment, that we were never sick in the normal way.10 After the shower and the medical, another wait: for half an hour we again stood barefoot in the snow. Then we were issued our blue and white striped uniform, or Drillich as they called it. Some of the uniforms bore the holes traced by the bullets that had put an end to the lives of the last tenants. Then two clogs, not necessarily a pair, and many of them with projecting nails: we were given no socks. It was up to us to find rags to put around our feet, and the paper of the cement bags to use as underwear. We were then sent off to the quarantine blocks,11 to a musical accompaniment: two German prisoners, one on violin, the other on accordion, playing ‘Addio alla vita’ from Tosca. The SS never missed a chance for amusement. We found the quarantine blocks completely isolated not only from the main camp but also one from another. On our arrival a Kapo known as Popeye, who was not a Spaniard and spoke to us through an interpreter, gave us the Block greeting: ‘If you smoke, we’ll kill you. If you drink at the wrong time, we’ll kill you. If you talk too loud, or make a noise, 25 strokes with the bullwhip. Anyone not German who puts the blame on a German, we’ll kill you. You are here to die.’ The whole thing was so ridiculous that at the end, despite our misery and our fatigue, we again began to laugh, whereupon Popeye drove us all outside the Block, and we found ourselves stamping our clogs in the snow. At last came the moment of rest. The quarantine blocks, however, had no bunks. We lay on worn-out palliasses, in rows of five, packed on our right sides like spoons, unable after that to move our position. A single blanket covered the five of us, thrown over us by a Kapo when we had taken our position. In some cases a Kapo

THE ARRIVAL 45

would walk across the bodies, stopping to dance upon us and crushing our ribs with his boots. So ended our first day. Everything we had had been taken from us. We had the feeling that we were nothing, simply Stücke. It was to foster that sentiment that the whole system had been invented. No man or woman or child who survived Mauthausen remembers his arrival there in quite the same way. The above description is a composite of various accounts by survivors of the convoy of 849 men which reached Mauthausen from Strasbourg on the night of 12–13 December 1940.12 It borrows its style from the accounts of the most educated, but in no sense does it capitalize upon the most dramatic elements from each. On the contrary, the picture it gives is banal and runof-the-mill. Manuel García, the future custodian of Mauthausen’s museum, together with so many others, remembers how, on the passenger train which they boarded at Munich, they received no food except what the International Red Cross was able to provide.13 A consignment of prisoners might be kept standing right through a freezing night.14 Vilanova points out that the arrival at Mauthausen was possibly worse than anywhere else, since almost all convoys reached Mauthausen by train,15 and the prisoners had to march more than four kilometres from the station to the camp, with a steep and often slippery hill which they had to take at a run.16 Conditions were proportionately better in spring or autumn, but the heat of summer provided a different agony. Charles Renaud, who arrived in Mauthausen in April, when the main preoccupation was thirst, describes how his convoy entered the main gate to see, instead of prisoners chained to the Klagemauer on the right, a prisoner left hanging from the chain on the left, his arms behind his back in that most agonizing of positions known as the Pfahlbinden. He adds that it was the Kapos, not the SS, who helped themselves to the incomers’ watches and wedding rings in exchange for some spoonfuls of water.17 The Effektenkammer was nevertheless the centre of all the traffic in stolen goods, most of which passed from the hands of the SS to the civilian population outside the camp.18 Even so, some articles of value, especially coins, which the prisoners had hidden in their garments, were overlooked by the SS, and when these clothes were sent to the disinfection Kommando its Kapos and even their prisoner staff had their own chance to steal or ‘organize’ (organisieren), which was the only word ever used by prisoners for this type of theft. Among those in this Kommando was a Catalan from Barcelona by the name of Conill, who hid his loot under the floorboards. Those who survived could even leave the Lager at the Liberation with a considerable amount of money.19 Finally, not all prisoners arrived in the dead of night, and even when they did, the evidence could not be entirely hidden. Manuel García, arriving in daylight, saw no one on the streets but recalls that the curtains in the houses were not drawn and that the SS were brutalizing the prisoners in full view of anyone watching from the windows.20 The Mauthausen villager Leopoldine Drexler, a young girl at the time, remembers how a convoy of several hundred filthy prisoners, in torn clothes, some barefoot, did not have to be seen to be recognized; ‘You could smell them as they passed through.’21 ‘You could smell them but you could also hear them,‘ recalls

46 MAUTHAUSEN, CATEGORY THREE

Erich Neumüller, another Mauthausen villager who lived in Ufer on the road that every convoy took. ‘There were so many that you could hear their tramp, even of the shoeless, even in the snow. I looked through the window, but I was very careful not to be seen looking. In 1945 there were only a few SS to guard a convoy, but all the prisoners were in a very weakened state. I was an apprentice and had to get up at 5 a.m. I did not see any prisoner shot, but when I left home the truck had not arrived and the corpses were lying in the road.’22 Pierre Daix recalls that, while it was normal for a truck to follow the convoy to pick up the bodies of those who were shot or beaten to death on the side of the road,23 the Kommando assigned to this did not come out on the night that his convoy arrived, with the result that the corpses were left lying there until the following morning; since this was the only road along the left bank of the Danube, any villager using the road would have seen the corpses.24 When the prisoners arrived in daylight, the SS might clear the streets, order all windows to be curtained, and arrest anyone they caught watching, but these precautions were not effective. The prisoners, in their fear and suffering, sought eye contact as they passed each house. The village children, and not only the children, would sneak up to the attic and peek through the windows.25 Some survivors remember the villagers watching them from behind the curtains as they passed.26 Others experienced a quite different arrival. ‘We marched through the village in broad daylight, in front of everybody,’ recalls Ramiro Santísteban. ‘The streets had not been emptied; the Austrian civilians were witnesses to everything.’27 Antonio García remembers his convoy arriving about midday, and the villagers engaged in their normal activities.28 Paul Tillard writes that when his own convoy arrived at the station, the villagers in their Tyrolean hats showed a certain pity towards them.29 Pity is not what others remember as the reaction of the Austrian civilians. Dr Wetterwald recalls their ‘prodigious indifference’.30 Přemysl Dobiáš recounts how, in May 1942, his little group passed through first Linz and then Mauthausen village: ‘The Austrians spat at us.’31 Le Chêne says of her husband’s convoy that the children threw stones at them and shouted, ‘You’ll soon be on Totenberg and up the chimney.’32 In daylight too, the prisoners in their march would have glimpsed the Danube and noticed how very grey it was, like everything else in front of them. Grey was to become the predominant colour in their lives. Grey the Danube, grey the fortress walls. Grey the Drillich and the granite stones, and the very air they breathed. To the few, and especially the Spaniards, who found the Danube blue, they looked across it to the hills beyond and saw…the Alps. ‘We can escape across to Switzerland!’ Manuel García remembers his group telling one another. ‘The fact is that none of us had the slightest idea where we were.’33 This readiness to believe the best was nevertheless the secret behind the Spaniards’ fortitude, and it would win them the willing or the unwilling admiration of all others. Baldomero Chozas remembers that the morale of his entering group was low, but he did his involuntary best, and spoke constantly of the cheeses he looked forward to eating after the Liberation, to such an extent that even the SS came to know him as ‘Queso’. Another Spaniard, similarly driven to make light of the direst adversity, reacted to receiving his Drillich with the jovial remark that ‘these must be the pyjamas’.34

THE ARRIVAL 47

As for the Kapos running up and down the lines of bodies pressed together, like transported slaves in an earlier age, and stamping upon them, no photograph exists to prove it, but the scene has inspired many a drawing exhibited today at the Mauthausen museum. The question was put to Manuel García, who became custodian of the museum and held the post for 20 years: ‘Was it really like this at the moment of your arrival, or is this overdrawn?’ ‘It is not overdrawn,’ he replied, ‘and it was not limited to the first night. In choosing the Kapos [the Greens and the Blacks], the SS knew how to pick the scum of the earth.’35

2 The outer circle The SS staff

Arriving in Mauthausen has been described as landing on another planet. Once through the camp gates, humanity was abolished; such were the rites of passage. The life, to call it a life, to which the prisoners had to adapt revolved around a small number of men in authority whose personalities, if not always their names, remain engraved in the memories of the survivors. There were the SS officers, most of whom remained in their posts throughout their internment. There were the sentries and the guards, who were transient and faceless. And there were the Kapos, fellowcaptives turned into captors, wielding the instrument of authority closest at hand to the hapless inmate. It was usually the Kapos whom the prisoners knew best. No SS slept in the fortress, and few SS ever entered it apart from the Rapportführer and his team of NCOs. Each NCO was responsible for a Block, and it was the responsibility of the Rapportführer to collect and check the reports of the NCOs. As for the SS guards in the watchtowers, they entered and left by steps mounted on the outside, not the inside, of the walls. The result was that only a few prisoners, notably the Prominenten who worked in the offices and services, came to know in detail the personalities of their tormentors. Other facts would emerge later, when some of those tormentors stood trial for their lives. In the case of the SS officers, two impressions were generally shared: they were young, well built, and physically attractive, but mentally of very limited grasp. Until National Socialism lifted them out of obscurity, Ziereis was a carpenter, Bachmayer a cobbler, Schulz a blacksmith, and Streitwieser an unsuccessful mechanic. As for their moral sense, the more depraved they were, the faster they would be advanced. Franz Ziereis, born in Munich in 1903, remained in command of Mauthausen, and of all its dependencies throughout Austria, for almost the entire period of the war. Before joining the SS he had served as a corporal in the Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic. He was only a private when he first served the SS in KLBuchenwald,1 then became an instructor in KL-Oranienburg, and was only 34 when Himmler picked him for the top post at Mauthausen. There he rose from the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer to Obersturmbannführer in 1943 and to Standartenführer in 1944—without ever having taken part in a military action. He owed his promotion to his energy. He had few other virtues. Despite his attractive appearance—he was tall, blue-eyed, with a moustache and thick but receding lightbrown hair—he impressed others mainly by his lack of education, so marked that he

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could barely read and write. He countered this with a swagger and a high degree of affectation, with his hands constantly on his hips, so that the Spaniards dubbed him ‘el Pavo’ (‘the Peacock’).2 Curiously, this arrogance was not expressed in the form of vanity common among the SS officers who liked to sit for Ricken to take their photographic portrait. Only one studio portrait was ever taken of him3—in 1944 when he was promoted to Standartenführer—and when the SS officers wished to display his new rank by hanging.his photograph on the wall of the officers’ mess, Ziereis ordered them to take it down, telling them, according to his orderly, ‘I’ll hang soon enough’.4 But arrogance and fatalism were only parts of his character. There was a darker side: he was emotionally unbalanced. Normally moody and irascible, he showed warmth to his wife Ida when she visited him in his office5 but it proves nothing about their marital relationship.6 Outwardly, the whole Ziereis family, living in their massive chalet overlooking the Danube and the Linz-Perg road,7 was a model of correct SS behaviour.8 The family included three children, two boys born in 1933 and 1937 and a girl born in 1940. The eldest son, Siegfried, who wore the uniform of the Hitlerjugend, attended the Hochschule in the village, where Erich Neumüller remembers him as ‘fat and arrogant’.9 His father, meanwhile, found no happiness in his home. Three children were not enough, he would tell Ida, for an SS officer to achieve his full ambition. It was empty talk: Ziereis received promotions as fast as he could expect them. But receiving no higher appointment, in self-pity and resentment he found solace in drink, both in private with his fellow-officers at home,10 and in public in front of his prisoners.11 The prisoners had special cause to fear his celebrations. His son Siegfried admitted, in a sworn statement after the Liberation, that on his 11th birthday his father instructed him in the art of shooting at live targets. Lining up 40 prisoners in front of his son, and loading the pistol himself, Ziereis watched while his son shot down all 40, one after the other, as if at a fair.12 The second-in-command, responsible for the Mauthausen garrison, was SSHauptsturmführer Georg Bachmayer. Dark of complexion, with nervous eyes and furtive looks, he trembled at the lips when enraged. He was none the less a coldblooded killer. As the officer in charge of security (Schutzhaftlagerführer), he was responsible for discipline, including capital punishment. A French survivor remembered him for his prodigious memory.13 All Spanish survivors remembered him as one of the most savage tormentors of their group and named him the ‘bloody gypsy’ (‘gitano sanguinario’), but in time he seemed to soften a little towards them, out of involuntary respect, and began to appoint some of them Prominenten. The key to his character, like that of Ziereis, is to be found in the poverty of his early life and the rapidity of his rise, but the sense of grievance of this young officer may have run deeper than most. One of his hands was crippled: its middle finger was permanently bent, and the first phalanx of the index finger was missing.14 The SS tended to avoid him. They considered him to be of partly gypsy stock, and they passed the word that his body smelled.15 His character in fact bordered on the psychopathic. Juan de Diego noted that he treated incoming Dutch Jewish children as would an affectionate uncle, playing joyful games with them, and then, half an

50 MAUTHAUSEN, CATEGORY THREE

hour later, he would order them into the Gaskammer.16 As for his own children, he adored them, just as he adored his wife, as well he might. Frau Bachmayer stood out from all the other SS wives. Again it was a detail of Spanish prisoners, including Mariano Constante, who attested to it. She received the prisoners with a smile and even a shy ‘guten Tag’, calling them ‘men’ and telling them gently the jobs they had to do. The two little Bachmayer daughters were, like their mother, gentle and charming, and the smiles of these three were the only smiles that the prisoners had seen, or would see, for years.17 If her husband adored her, he also adored the prostitutes in the officers’ brothel, and bestowed his free time equally on both his homes. He would return to his house with his uniform spattered with the blood of his last victim, hand it to his servant, the red-triangle Karl Oliva, and re-emerge in a fresh uniform, with every stain removed, to receive the adulation of the girls in the home away from home.18 It was the consensus, however, that the most powerful man in Mauthausen after Ziereis was not Bachmayer but SS-Obersturmführer Karl Schulz, head of the Politische Abteilung.19 This was the branch office which the Gestapo maintained in every camp, with a permanent representative acting as a political counsellor and answering directly to the regional Gestapo authorities as well as to the camp commandant. The representative was responsible for seeing that the orders received for the extermination of a particular prisoner or group of prisoners were duly carried out—by the SS in uniform or by the prisoners whom they designated. Ziereis’ adjutant, SS-Obersturmführer Adolf Zutter, later confessed to an Allied officer that the execution orders passed through his hands, and that these were many. The orders would originate in Berlin in the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, at first under Heydrich, later under Kaltenbrunner. Some orders would bear their signatures, and might pass through the Reichskriminalpolizeiamt (the Kripo under Arthur Nebe), but usually they were signed by Nebe’s subordinate, the Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller, who would instruct Schulz. Schulz would inform Ziereis, and he would pass the instructions on to Zutter, who would then handle the arrangements.20 In the case of Schulz, like Ziereis and Bachmayer, he held his post at Mauthausen for virtually the entire period of the war, from 1 September 1939 to 3 May 1945, when the SS fled. Throughout that time, he served in the capacities of registrar, civil magistrate, and director of the crematorium, and no prisoner, from the moment he arrived, lived outside the clutch of the man known as ‘the Bird of Death’. The son of a postal clerk, Schulz was born with a misshapen foot, which forced him to wear special shoes. Starting out as a railroad metal-worker, he was ambitious enough to find a post with the criminal police (Kripo) in Cologne. He was not lacking in intelligence, and taught himself fluent French. He then obtained a post in KL-Dachau and was promoted to SS-Hauptsturmführer. For reasons that were not explained even at his trial in 1966–7, Schulz was demoted in 1939 to SSHauptscharführer and sent to Mauthausen. The Politische Abteilung’s office was just opening, and Schulz at once applied for, and obtained, its top position. He later described how Ziereis introduced him to his responsibilities: ‘When you get up, tear the day off the calendar; the rest of the day is yours.’ Schulz found it a labour of

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love: he ran the office from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. He built a reputation for himself as the Lager’s éminence grise, and lived like a little king, his fingers manicured and toes pedicured by the inmate servants, and his huge hound Hasso at his feet. His home— he lived with his wife and son in an apartment rented from the owner of the drugstore21 near the station—was fitted with furniture made by the prisoners, using the finest wood. It was a case of what the SS called corruption, and when Bachmayer intercepted a delivery, it led to a violent quarrel between the two. Schulz’s character has been called superficial but inscrutable. At least parts of it are known, and alcoholism helps to explain his violent rages. Schulz’s principal aides, in the nine-room compound that made up the Politische Abteilung, were SS-Oberscharführer Werner Fassel, SS-Unterscharführer Wilhelm Müller, and SS-Unterscharführer Hans Prellberg von Brunswick.22 He also had, at some time or other, 20 German, Czech, and Spanish prisoners, and, late in the war, 12 female civilian employees. The women, who were probably all local Austrians, were introduced in 1943 so as to release the SS men for service in the front line. The men, however, were not sent, and the 12 women were the cause of very frequent quarrels. Schulz’s marriage was already in ruins before they arrived, so he was especially pleased to have the women around him. Since Climent Sarrión was among those who worked in the compound, as we have seen, he was asked to testify at Schulz’s trial in Cologne. So was Francesc Boix, since the photographic laboratory in which he worked was housed at first in the front of the same building, and when it moved to another Block it was still subordinated to the Politische Abteilung. It was in the office of Schulz’s subordinate Wilhelm Müller that the prisoners were usually interrogated and tortured. Formerly a carpenter in Bielefeld, Müller was responsible for carrying out the Kugel-Aktion on escaped prisoners of war. In the compound, he loved to threaten the prisoner staff with a whipping, and one of them, Gerhard Kanthack, has described him as a homosexual sadist whose eyes would light up every time he struck.23 In fact, all Schulz’s SS staff did their part, and the only precaution taken to conceal the evidence was to stop at the approach of a visitor. Bloodstains were visible all over the furniture. The shelves contained reports and bullwhips side by side. Climent Sarrión described how Schulz remained relatively correct towards those who worked with him in the compound but became insanely violent toward those he interrogated. A hackneyed phrase became his favourite, and he repeated it like the catechism: ‘The road out of the Lager passes through the crematorium.’ He had no oven in his office but he had a little stove. Whether mid-winter or mid-summer he would yell to his subordinate Hans Prellberg, ‘Prellberg, light the stove!’ That was Schulz imperious. There was also Schulz exultant, at which times he would call, ‘Light the stove, Prellberg!’ The Spaniard Climent recalled how, in February 1942, a group of elderly Jews stood waiting naked in the snow outside the compound. Schulz beckoned to two small rabbis to enter his office, asking them if they were cold. The stove glowed with heat. They moved towards it. Schulz then seized one of them and seated him on top of it. The burns were intense. When lifted off—he was unable to move himself—pieces of his flesh stuck to the stove. Two days later the

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rabbi died in the Revier. Another favourite game for Schulz was to force prisoners into narrow holes dug in the ground, which he sealed with wooden lids.24 It was Climent, working under Schulz in the Politische Abteilung, who also had the job (and perhaps only he had it) of mailing off the prisoners’ ashes to their families. Once again, this was a restricted privilege: only the criminal Greens were honoured, and in general only the German Greens, although the families of some Polish Greens also received a package. Certainly no Spanish family ever did. The amount of ashes in a package corresponded to the weight of the dead inmate.25 Mauthausen was hell in the sense that it was man’s finest attempt to create a subsidiary on earth. From the devil’s point of view, it was spoilt by sporadic human weakness. Schulz’s behaviour could exceed what the civilian staff could endure. Many a time Frau Steinman and Frau Steiner left the office in tears. Even Frau Neugebauer, who was Schulz’s mistress, broke down, but it was Fräulein Brigitte Sombeck who provided the sensation. Stunningly beautiful, refined, well groomed, she was from her arrival the cynosure of all eyes. There could not have been an SS who did not look for some excuse to drop by the compound to get a peek at her. All tried to date her, and certainly Schulz. Schulz decided that prisoners would no longer be brutalized while the secretaries were present, but it was asking much of the SS to always restrain their instincts. One day in the autumn of 1944, Werner Fassel began beating a prisoner in front of her. Brigitte Sombeck broke down in tears. Fassel went up to her to console her. She slapped him in the face.26 At the lower levels of command, five names remained prominent in the collective memories of the survivors, not least the Spaniards. SS-Obersturmführer Heinrich Hans Eisenhöfer was generally the first officer they set eyes on; as the officer responsible for the Effektenkammer and the expropriation of the prisoners’ belongings, he was always present at the moment that new inmates arrived.27 Anton Streitwieser, who served under Bachmayer as 3rd Schutzhaftlagerführer, came from a working class family and had almost no education. He had arrived from KLDachau as an Unterscharführer in 1938, when he was only 22-years-old. He was soon appointed commandant at Gusen, but in May 1940 he was dismissed from his post for setting up his own pig farm, using as pig food the rations he embezzled from the prisoners’ supplies. He was later sent to fight on the Russian front, and after being wounded four times in the space of 14 months he was reassigned to Mauthausen. Late in the war he was promoted to Obersturmführer and given command of the Nebenlager at Schwechat, then Floridsdorf, and finally MödlingHinterbrühl, where he would direct the final evacuation.28 Energetic, ambitious, arrogant—he would on occasion parade before the prisoners dressed in his fencing costume—he was most remembered for the hideous hound, a bitch named Asta, which he trained to mutilate the prisoners. The call by Streitwieser, ‘Wo ist der Lump?’ (‘Where’s the beggar?’), was Asia’s signal to attack.29 The French survivor René-Jean Demanche, who was himself its victim, has described how the dog would savage a prisoner for three or four minutes while Streitwieser calmly observed.30 On another occasion Streitwieser was visibly less calm, as we shall see, when his wife Käte was actually compromised in an affair with the Kapo Karl Matucher. Another

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prisoner, Franz Wessely, died in Floridsdorf in the autumn of 1944 when Streitwieser loosed the hound and it ripped off his penis.31 More than once, in Mauthausen’s Block 16 in the quarantine section, four inmates were taken out and thrown to the SS dogs for training. The shrieks and the groans continued for half an hour. The next morning the mortality Kommando picked up four corpses alongside the Block.32 Such incidents have been recorded only because they were witnessed by survivors. Most horrors were not witnessed, or witnessed only by those who were next in line as victims. The command of Mauthausen’s infamous quarry was entrusted to SSObersturmführer Johannes Bernhard Grimm, whom the Spaniards knew as ‘el Seco’.33 Grimm entered the Allgemeine SS on 8 October 1941, and the Waffen SS on 10 April 1942, and was assigned to Mauthausen that year. With startling candour, cynicism, or naïveté, he admitted later at his trial at Dachau that some 10 000 prisoners died in the quarry during the three years of his mandate, ‘some of them as a result of the work load, which was too heavy for anyone in their weak physical condition.’ He added, however, that most of the prisoners were murdered in one of three or four conventional ways.34 Grimm found time to set up a kitchen garden beside the quarry for his personal use, fertilizing it with the ashes from the crematorium.35 Sometimes the Spaniards were able to steal a tomato, or a beetroot, or a potato, but they risked their lives even in trying.36 Grimm’s immediate subordinate was the Austrian Otto Drabek, but the man most remembered by the Spaniards in the quarry was another Austrian, SS-Hauptscharführer Johann Spatzenegger, a gaunt, thin-faced engineer.37 So fanatical a Nazi was Hans Spatzenegger that his own comrades labelled him ‘the Nazi’.38 ‘Spatz’ was the name the inmates gave him,39 but it was never said except in fear and loathing. The two others were staff-sergeants and their reputation no less fearful. Michel de Boüard considers them on a par with Bachmayer and Spatzenegger as the top four in brutality.40 SS-Oberscharführer Andreas Trum,41 tall, thick-lipped, with a long pale face, had entered the SS in 1940 at the age of 19; he arrived in Mauthausen in 1943 to assume the post of Arbeitsdienstführer, responsible for all the work details, and remained there until the end. Finally, SS-Oberscharführer Josef Niedermayer, an Austrian from nearby Linz, joined the SS in 1938 at 17 and arrived in Mauthausen in April 1942, also staying until the end. There he was placed in charge of the prison, with the title Leiter des Zellenhaus, and from November 1944 he was also given charge of Block 20, the death block.42 He was also responsible (under Eisenhöfer) for collecting the personal effects of the 4000 prisoners43 who were assigned to the gas chamber.44 While the gas chamber at Mauthausen has been the subject of an intense study, notably by the survivor Serge Choumoff, remarkably little has been written about the rest of the Bunker, and even the term has been misused. The Bunker was a twostorey compound that housed, on the ground floor, the gas chamber, the ‘portrait studio’, the gallows and the crematorium, and on the upper floor, the prison, with its only access on the outer side. The prison was referred to by the SS variously as the Arrest, Zellenhaus, Zellengebaüde, and even Bunker, a misnomer which thus

54 MAUTHAUSEN, CATEGORY THREE

equated the part and the whole. Logically, nothing would ever be known about the Bunker, because those prisoners who worked in any section of it were marked for extermination. Our knowledge of much that happened there is provided by Ramón Bargueño, a Spaniard from Toledo.45 When the Spanish network heard that the SS were in need of a prisoner to work in the prison, Bargueño found himself—from 3 August 1943, to the day of Liberation—employed in what was one of the most secret elements of the SS system. Since Bargueño was a man of very limited education—the only profession he has ever held has been that of cook—the memoirs that he later produced were of such mediocrity that he has been derided by some of his comrades.46 This is unfortunate, because he has some unique testimony to provide. The Arrest, its entrance protected by an iron gate, consisted of two wings, each enclosed by another iron gate. Each wing had a washroom, with a circular fountain, but there were no latrines; instead, each cell had a bucket. The cells to the left on entering the Arrest were used for the KZ inmates. Those to the right were reserved for SS men who had been court-martialled for indiscipline, usually drunkenness, and at least some of the cells were always occupied by miscreant SS, who received no more food than did the inmates in the left wing. An anteroom in the left wing served for interrogation and provided accommodation for a single SS. This was occasionally used by Niedermayer, whenever he did not return home to his wife and daughter, or by an SS from the Politische Abteilung who was sent to the Arrest to interrogate a prisoner.47 The Arrest was also used for special prisoners, including British, American and other Allied airmen and special agents who had fallen into German hands, and for certain celebrities whom the SS took hostage in the closing months of the war and held under false names.48 They included Nicolas Horthy, son of the Regent of Hungary,49 and Mario Badoglio, the son of Marshal Badoglio.50 Of the 4600 prisoners who were thrown into these cells, fewer than 400 survived.51 Niedermayer himself admitted at his trial that he had carried out some 400 executions in the Bunker.52 ‘Over 4000 died in the Bunker’ is history’s terse conclusion. How did they die? Some clues are available. SS-Hauptscharführer Hans Michael Killermann would sit on a stool in one of the cells. In front of him would dangle the body of a naked man, his feet bound to the top bolts of the cell door, his head brushing the ground. A cord was attached to his testicles. Killermann would draw the cord slowly, then give a sharp pull and let the writhing body crash against the iron door like a hammer against a gong.53 Such were the men, to call them men, who held in their hands the lives of the 7000 Spaniards who arrived in Mauthausen and to whom each prisoner, whenever summoned, would incant the ritualistic phrase of abject submission: ‘Häftling (and his number) gehorsam zur Stelle.’54 It would be unwise to suggest that others were less bestial; they were simply less visible, or there a shorter time. Such a one was SSOberscharführer Johann Müller, who was at Mauthausen (as Rapportführer) only from 1942 to 1943. Tall, strong, and totally without feeling, he was dubbed ‘Boxer’ by the prisoners, both for his gait (he rolled from side to side in a prize-fighter’s

THE OUTER CIRCLE 55

swagger), and for his custom, after first putting on a glove, of knocking prisoners to the ground with a single punch in the face. Mariano Constante apparently attracted Müller’s attention, since Müller liked to call the Spaniard ‘Nonnenschlachter’—in fun, obviously, since the SS were hardly concerned about the slaughter of nuns.55 The fact that one of the two wings in the prison was permanently reserved for delinquent SS was used to sustain the argument after the war that any SS caught illtreating a prisoner could be arrested. At the trial at Dachau, an SS corporal announced with a straight face that a fellow-member had been sentenced to five years’ imprisonment at Mauthausen for killing a Polish Jew without a reason.56 The irony here is that SS personnel could indeed be sentenced to a term in an SS camp, and even imprisoned in Mauthausen’s Arrest, but certainly not for the reason given by that SS corporal. Two SS men who were serving in Himmler’s personal bodyguard were found drunk while on duty and each was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment in Mauthausen. They were made Blockschreiber, and as such they slept in Block 2 with the other Prominenten and were remembered by several Spanish survivors. In no sense were they ever at the mercy of their fellowprisoners. ‘It was impossible to kill a German,’ remarks Manuel García. ‘The reaction of the Kapos and the SS would be instant. It was as unthinkable as organizing an insurrection.’57 Juan de Diego remembers SS-Oberscharführer Horn, who worked under Eisenhöfer in the Effektenkammer. There was plenty of opportunity to steal, and Horn could not resist, but he was caught, and in front of de Diego he suffered the humiliation of having his insignia of rank torn from his uniform. But nothing worse happened to him, and he remained at Mauthausen as an SS guard to the end. Another prisoner at Mauthausen was a former valet of Hitler, who allowed himself to be interviewed by the press, whereupon he was arrested by the Gestapo.58 Finally, in March 1945, an SS-Hauptscharführer arrived from outside as a prisoner, slept in Block 2, and was released a few weeks later, to serve with his previous rank in the garrison guard. When he saw de Diego again, he smiled at him, and de Diego dared to smile back.59 Perhaps the experience had humanized him, or perhaps the end was then too close.

3 The inner circle The Kapos

Despite everything the SS was capable of doing, the more immediate threat to the inmates’ survival came from the class of prisoners selected by the SS to serve as Kapos. The essential idea of delegating power to prisoners was to destroy all sense of honour and human compassion among KZ inmates. The Kapos were victims and executioners at the same time. As victims, they were not exempt from the roll-calls on the Appellplatz that wore them down no less than others. Being, however, morally weak, and faced with the choice of dying or killing, they were content to murder others in the hope of saving themselves. Some of these myrmidons were murderers already. The first step in building up a Kapo class at Mauthausen had come in the very first week of the Anschluss: every prison and penitentiary in Austria was emptied of its criminals, those with suspended sentences were placed under arrest, and all were sent to Dachau, and from there, later in 1938, to the new camp at Mauthausen. It was these holders of the Green triangle, ‘the founding members’ as they grotesquely called themselves, who became the first Kapos and enjoyed all the privileges pertaining to club membership: alcohol, tobacco, free access to the ‘Puff’ (the camp brothel officially known as the Sonderbau),1 and the right to steal with impunity the rations and clothing of the inmates.2 The German Green Kapos would even react to one of Hitler’s broadcast speeches by joining the SS in the Nazi salute and in singing ‘Deutschland über alles’.3 The Reichsführer-SS, in a speech he delivered to a group of generals at Sonthofen on 21 June 1944, could not have been more explicit: ‘These 40 000 German criminals, I’ll have you know, whether they are political or professional, make up—and here I’ll ask you not to laugh—my “non-commissioned officer corps” for this entire society… And from the moment that we are no longer satisfied with him, he ceases to be a Kapo and goes back to sleeping with the rest. He will be beaten to death on the first night, and that he knows only too well.’4 The very first Kapo of all at Mauthausen was the green-triangle August Adam, who made it a habit to ask the incoming prisoners what their profession was. Whenever he found a lawyer, priest, magistrate, or professor— ‘ein Eierschädel’ in the parlance of the SS—he informed him with delight that here in the Lager the world stood downside up, and if they had any trouble in understanding that, the translator—he tapped his Gummischlauch—was there to help; whereupon he made

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free use of the translator, and when he was satisfied, lined up the chosen group into a Scheissekompanie and marched them off to clean the latrines.5 Much was said, during the trials of SS officers after the war, about the regulations from Berlin strictly forbidding the Kapos to strike the prisoners. In the case of Mauthausen, it was admitted by Ziereis’ adjutant Viktor Zoller, that Ziereis allowed and even encouraged Kapos to strike.6 Such regulations, of course, had no more to do with reality than the famous report that even an SS member could be arrested for ill-treating a prisoner. Up to March 1945, all the top Kapo posts, with some notable exceptions, were held by Greens, and often by the worst of Greens. The highest post of all (Lagerältester) was held for a time by the Sudeten German Josef Schöps, who wore Red, but for no known reason. Brutal, and servile to the SS, he was always ready to volunteer to hang his own comrades. Under him, the Lagerältester II was the Austrian Green Franz Unek, from Vienna, who was considered by some to be the worst sadist in the entire Lager. He had moved up from Kapo of Block 12, which housed the Spaniards and French, and his victims numbered in the hundreds.7 The best known Kapo in the history of Mauthausen was not Schöps, however, but Magnus Keller, whom everyone in the Lager knew as ‘King Kong’,8 on account of his enormous size, his ambling gait, and his simian rages. A Munich motor mechanic, ruddy, often drunk, he had entered the KZ (Dachau) as a red triangle, and was probably a follower of the fallen Ernst Röhm. Transferred to Mauthausen on 27 September 1939, he launched himself on a highly successful career that took him through the ranks of the Kapos until in 1941 he was appointed Lagerältester I. Thereafter he selected the subordinate Kapos, and they obeyed him blindly. Keller was a man who inspired real horror, and many a prisoner was strangled in his enormous hands.9 Sometimes a mere frown from Keller, puffing perennially on his long-stemmed porcelain pipe, his pearl-grey eyes set in a Buddha-like head, was all the indication given that a prisoner was to die, or suffer worse than a quick death. It was to the refinement of his tortures that he owed the astounding privileges he enjoyed: not only a bedroom (in Block 11), radio, servants, and the like, but liberty to go into town by himself, go fishing on the lake, and hunting in the woods.10 To the millions of KL prisoners whose thoughts were concentrated on getting through the day, or the minute, such freedom was beyond their dreams. It is most unlikely that a history of the Kapos of the KZ will ever be written. It is surprising how imprecise all accounts have been in their regard. The reason for this may well be that while the SS had the opportunity to flee in May 1945, and took it, the Kapos could not follow them, and in the Liberation many of the worst were beaten to death before their identity and background had been properly established. Most of them are known only by their nickname: ‘Popeye’, for example, or ‘Rudi el Gitano’.11 The Spaniards and all others could remember the German Green Johann Zaremba, the Oberkapo of the quarry Kommando, who had a little hut in the quarry in which to take refuge from the rain and snow,12 and whose brutality made him the natural choice of his superior Spatzenegger;13 and another German Green, Josef Pelzer, the Kapo of the Steinträger as they mounted the 186 steps.14 There was

58 THE INNER CIRCLE

also Karl Maierhofer, a German gypsy Black and the self-important leader of the band, whose knowledge of music was limited to beating time, and who relished the public hangings for the chance they gave him to perform as the strutting drummajor with the white kepi decorated with double gold bars. Karl, as he was known to everyone except the Spaniards, who called him Llup, was equally proud of his second hat, that of semi-official night executioner. At Ebensee, Ganz would say to him, ‘I don’t want to see this man around here tomorrow morning,’ and that night Karl, with two acolytes, would hang, strangle, or drown him in the latrines.15 At Gusen, the names of several Kapos were identified and remembered by the survivors.16 The Spaniards remembered especially the German Wolf, who murdered in the same way as Karl, stamping on the corpses afterwards like a man deranged; but they reserved their deepest hatred for the Spaniards who had betrayed them by becoming Kapos and who were as brutal as any Green: Asturias (known as ‘Napoleon’, who served as Lagerältester at St Georgen), Félix (‘el Loco’) Domingo (in charge of the kitchen Kommando), Indalecio González González, Losa, Tomás, and ‘el Negro’.17 Another Spanish Kapo, José Palleja (‘el Negus’), enjoyed a reputation that travelled far beyond the Nebenlager at Schwechat, Floridsdorf, and Mödling where he worked. A notorious pederast, he beat his fellow-prisoners, especially the French and including the sick, for the sheer love of it—more than one died from the beating.18 The French captain Billotte, though marked for life by blows inflicted by Palleja, lived to see the day when he would confront the Spaniard before a military tribunal in Toulouse. He described him as the ‘most terrible of Kapos: Kapos in other camps would threaten prisoners with a transfer to the care of “el Negus” if they caused trouble, and we knew what that meant.’19 Such documented cases were the exceptions: the general picture of the Kapos at Mauthausen, as elsewhere, remains extremely blurred.

4 The first Spanish contingents

We have seen that the first contingent of Spaniards entered Mauthausen on 6 August 1940.1 The train ride in summer was a terrible ordeal, and some Spaniards had died from suffocation and dehydration. Frédéric Ricol, of Paris, testified in court that he had gone three days and three nights without food or water,2 and José Escobedo, an anarchist turned socialist from Teruel, who had been taken prisoner by the Germans at Dunkirk and sent first to Stalag I-B in East Prussia, attests that the 169 men in his convoy who arrived at Mauthausen on 9 August travelled for four days without food or water.3 Thirst drove some to the point of madness, whereupon others killed them.4 Mariano Constante writes that his Compagnie de travailleurs numbered 350 when taken prisoner in June 1940, and that the Gestapo records show that only 300 of them reached Mauthausen.5 Roger Heim writes that, of the 450 Frenchmen in his group, 130 were dead either on arrival or within a few days of arrival.6 If other contingents arrived in the dead of night, without the villagers of Mauthausen seeing them as they passed through from the station on the way westward to the camp, the first Spanish contingent on 6 August arrived at eight o’clock in the morning, in full view of the villagers.7 No prisoner died on the road in that particular convoy, despite the fact that many Spaniards had not been able to replace the boots they had worn out in the forced march from France to Germany. It was a testimony to the endurance of the Spaniards, whose long experience of deprivation worked in their favour. At the time of the arrival of the first Spanish contingents, the camp was not yet a fortress. It was surrounded only by electrified wire. Escobedo recalls arriving through the quarry and the 186 steps.8 His group climbed the steps in ranks of five, passing other Spaniards carrying rocks who indicated that they had arrived there three days earlier. The great gates to the fortress were not quite completed, and 1500 prisoners were engaged in the Baukommando, building—at enormous human cost—the main road leading up to the garage entrance, the Appellplatz, and the massive granite ramparts. The only other inmates they found were Germans, Austrians, Czechs, and Poles, with some stateless Russians, to a total of some 6000.9 On 24 August, a further contingent of 430 Spaniards arrived from Angoulême, via Colmar and Strasbourg. It consisted of Spanish families which had been interned

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at Angoulême by the French Vichy Government. Sending them as families to Mauthausen was an administrative error, since Mauthausen was not built to cater for women and children. But the matter of sending Spanish women and children to any place in Germany, when Angoulême is so much closer to Spain, raises a broader question: which government—in Vichy, Berlin, or Madrid—was responsible for the decision? The answer is probably all three, Madrid and Vichy sharing the desire to be rid of these unwanted elements, and Berlin always happy to assist. The situation on the Mauthausen platform on 24 August attests to the lack of preparation. Usually a convoy was cleared from the station within minutes. This one remained there for two or three hours, while the Mauthausen commandant was reportedly in telephone contact with the Spanish Embassy in Berlin. At the end of that time it was decided that the men and boys over 12 would enter KL-Mauthausen while the women and children would remain on the train, to be transported to Spain.10 The arrival of this contingent, or of a similar contingent made up of Spanish families, happened to be observed by a young Austrian girl, Anna Strasser, who was to become a heroine of the Austrian Resistance. In April 1939, while just 18-yearsold, and living with her family in St Valentin, she had obtained a post in the office of Landwirtschaftliche Lager-hausgenossenschaft, just 300 metres from Mauthausen station, to which she travelled each day by train. Even by 1939, at home in St Valentin, Anna Strasser had heard talk, picked up from German soldiers, of atrocities in the SS camps in Germany, and the opening of KL-Mauthausen was a secret to no one. In the very first days in her post, she could see for herself how incoming prisoners were treated at the station. Her firm, whose soaring warehouse tower, 12 storeys high, caught the eye of many an incoming prisoner, was in the business of delivering vegetables, bought from local farms, to the camp, and the firm had an annex at the freight yard of the station. In the course of her work, she witnessed the construction of a special ramp for incoming prisoners. She also found herself in close contact with SS personnel who came to the office to settle the accounts. Some of them would recount to her, and to her colleague and dear friend Annemarie,11 how many prisoners they had killed that day. One boasted to them: ‘Today I finished off another two.’ ‘How did you do it?’ she asked him. ‘I drove both of them into a cesspit,’ he replied, ‘then I threw a crate over the top and stood on top of it until they drowned.’ ‘Don’t you have any heart at all?’ she remembers asking him. ‘But Fräulein,’ he replied, ‘an SS doesn’t have a heart. We’re happy when we put an end to a couple of useless pigs, and we get extra rations for doing it.’ Another told her, ‘Last night 119 prisoners froze to death. The barracks are only provisional. The wind goes right through them, and the prisoners lie on planks without blankets.’ Another, who was an Unter scharführer, fell in love with her, but she had no desire to know him better. He told her, in the hope of impressing her, that he had played a part in the assassination of Dollfuss. She called him a murderer. For six months he waited for her, every third day in accordance with his duties, standing arrogantly on the road which she and Annemarie had to cross at lunchtime to reach the Gasthaus in front of the station where they had lunch. ‘He put the fear of death into me,’ she recalls, ‘but finally he disappeared.’ It was at her firm’s station annex that Anna

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Strasser witnessed the arrival from France of a trainload of Spaniards with their families. ‘I shall never forget the scene, or forget the cries of the women and children, when the SS separated the families. One day I asked an SS what they had done with the Spanish men they had taken into the camp. He replied with contempt, “We killed the lot”.’12 The experience of Lázaro Nates provides a useful case-study. He arrived on 24 August at the age of 16, with his mother and younger brother, aged 12. Although his mother lied about Lázaro’s age by reducing it by four years, it made no difference, since the SS judged the children on the basis of height and build. She and her younger son were subsequendy returned to Laredo, her home town in Spain, where she suffered the fate of any wife or widow of a Republican. In her case she was thrown into prison as proxy for her husband, a centrist who had served in the Civil War as a village mayor and who was then working, and dying, in railroad construction in the Sahara. Their son Lázaro meanwhile was witness to the fate of those veterans in the convoy who had been disabled in the Civil War: they were liquidated on arrival, without their names being entered in the camp registry.13 He himself was assigned to Block 17, but other children were housed in Block 1614 and Block 18, the latter under the command of ‘Al Capone’, one of the most degenerate of the Kapos.15 Block 16 gave the children a quick insight into life at Mauthausen, since it was kept for food experiments. Jean Laffitte, who was at that time in that Block, recounts how 300 prisoners, who continued to work in the quarry, were given one of three diets: the normal diet, a special diet of grain and grass, or a third diet abundant in barley, which made them fat but weaker than ever. The results were checked by blood tests.16 The Spanish children in Mauthausen constituted a very special group, since these were the only children to enter the Lager at any time. At the time of their arrival in 1940, some of them, including Lázaro Nates, had the good fortune to be selected as Stubendiener, or Block orderlies. The least fortunate were assigned directly to the quarry or sent to Gusen, where they were shown no more favour than the adults and where they could literally watch their fathers die.17 It was the rule among family members that wherever possible they would avoid working in the same Kommando. The purpose of this was to avoid the temptation to strike back if they saw a member of their family brutalised. Ramiro Santísteban arrived with his father and his brother, and all three would survive, though his father died a month after the Liberation. Jacinto Cortés, on the other hand, arrived with his father and two brothers, and his father and older brother José died together after their transfer to Gusen on 24 February 1941.18 It was the impending transfer of two other Spanish boys, Lázaro Nates and Manuel Gutiérrez, from Mauthausen to Gusen that brought them together in a momentous decision. In discussing the matter they agreed that, whatever Mauthausen was, it was a known factor, while Gusen was an unknown, but under the same management. One day, after roll-call in the Appellplatz, they decided to try the impossible and presented themselves to the snub-nosed Rapportführer whom they knew as ‘el Chato’. Beside him towered ‘King Kong’. Nates blurted out, ungrammatically but in the only language

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permitted: ‘Wir wollen bleiben hier, da hier sind unsere Vater!’ A prisoner of Mauthausen was pleading to stay in the place he was because he liked to be close to his father! The whole idea was so totally unexpected that ‘el Chato’ and ‘King Kong’ stood looking at each other for a moment in silent wonder and then broke out in uncontrollable laughter. The Rapportführer forgot even to check the matter out, thinking no doubt that the request was so outlandish that the facts had to be true. Perhaps he was grateful for the amusement. In any event, the upshot of the incident was that both Nates and Gutiérrez remained in their places in Mauthausen, and both survived. What proved the turning point for the boys who remained in Mauthausen was the agreement reached in June 1943 between Bachmayer and Anton Poschacher, who owned the stone works in Mauthausen village, to employ 50 of these youths as apprentice stone-masons. The Poschacher Kommando, or Poschacherjugend, as the unit became known, remained throughout its existence exclusively Spanish. It was made up of the youngest, who did not leave it when they reached a certain age, nor were they ever replaced by others if they died.19 The Spanish youths thus worked in the privately-owned quarry near Mauthausen station, under Austrian civilian engineers and the skilled workers who operated the machines; all of them were over 60 years of age. The boys were paid a salary of between two and three Reichsmark a week which they never touched but which was paid by Poschacher into an SS account in the local bank. They were told they would receive the money when the war was over. On the other hand, Himmler also said that nobody was to leave KLMauthausen alive. Since the unthinkable happened and Germany lost the war, it allowed the Poschacherjugend the opportunity to apply later to the West German government for payment of their paltry earnings; some did, and the government paid. The boys were housed together at first in Block 11, and in the final year in Block 6. Each day they were marched to the Poschacher quarry, at first along a hill that skirted the village, under an escort of one SS sergeant and four men, but later the SS lost interest in guarding their secret and the boys marched through Mauthausen, with the escort being steadily reduced all the way to none, apart from their Spanish Kapo, Antonio Benedicto. They started out with a political innocence that could have undone them. They began by marching to work singing the Internationale. When told by their Spanish Kapo that what they were doing was highly dangerous, they told him there was no reason to worry: they were singing it in Spanish! It had to be explained to them that the Internationale was…international. The Poschacher unit, wherever it was assigned,20 enjoyed blessings unknown to those they left behind in the camp. They ate reasonably well, with food sent to them from the camp, and they were rarely brutalised, but they were not spared from witnessing the brutalisation of others. The vicar of the local church showed pity for the plight of the boys; he was noticed by an SS who swung the vicar around and let loose with a massive kick, from which the vicar staggered off as best he could.21 The boys were also in sight of other small Kommandos that worked in the village, notably the Donaulinde Kommando that worked on the barges and the Bahnhofskommando that

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loaded produce into and off the trains. What struck the boys most was the attitude shown by the SS towards the Austrian civilian population. When the author of this book told a group of Poschacher survivors that the SS took care to conceal their crimes from the local population, one of them, Ramiro Santísteban, replied with a phrase that haunts the mind: ‘Embarrassed, the SS? The SS embarrassed? …There was an attractive, neatly dressed Austrian girl in her early twenties,’ he went on. ‘She could have been the bank manager’s daughter. She came upon a scene of brutality on the road where one of these Kommandos was working and which our group happened to be passing. Seeing a body and a pool of blood on the pavement, she stepped into the road. An SS noticed, seized her by the hair, asked her what there was on the ground that disgusted her, and forced her head down towards it.’22 On another occasion, an SS-Mann, hence without any rank at all, encountered a Wehrmacht soldier on the same stretch of road. The soldier, who was in his fifties, passed the SS without saluting him, understandably. ‘You don’t salute the SS?’, yelled the SS-Mann, grabbing the soldier in full view of Santísteban and slamming him across the road.23 No one will ever know the full story of Mauthausen village in the days of the Lager, of the terror that ran through it day and night, of the words exchanged in the tobacconist shop, at the pharmacist, in the post office, and at night in the taverns, when the SS guards came in to drink, and in their drink, inevitably, let out ‘just enough for the whole secret to be known… There were fights at night between the SS and Wehrmacht soldiers on leave,’ recalls the Bürgermeister of Mauthausen; ‘If an SS was beaten up, the SS would come back in the morning for the soldier who did it, take him up to the fortress and execute him.’24 Despite the terror, Mauthausen village did not close its heart to the victims.25 However hesitant and isolated, expressions of sympathy and consideration continued to be shown, as the Poschacher youth affirm, and when this chapter of their lives was closed some of these same Spanish boys would choose to marry girls from Mauthausen village.26 One such was Manuel Gutiérrez, called ‘el Sardina’ because he was so small. Like others he was virtually illiterate, and Manuel García remembers teaching him how to count. After the Liberation he returned to France and married a French girl, but his heart remained with the Austrian girl whose house they used to pass on the way to the quarry and who was always there to smile to him. In the end Gutiérrez returned to Mauthausen and married the Austrian. Today they live in Savoie, and return occasionally to Mauthausen to visit friends in the village.27 Razola considers the Spanish contingent of 849 that arrived on the night of 12– 13 December 1940 to be the largest of all. At that time the only camps in operation in Austria were Mauthausen and Gusen. These large-scale convoys continued up to the summer of 1941,28 and that year, according to Hans Maršálek’s records, no fewer than 8000 Spaniards arrived.29 The Spaniards had by now moved into the unenviable position of replacing the Poles as the national group with the highest death rate, at least in Gusen. In June 1941 one in every four mortalities was a Spaniard; in October 1941, the ratio was three in every four, and in December 1941, four in every five.30

5 International friction and the brothel

The Spaniards, like other national groups, were housed together, in Blocks 9, 11, 12, and 13, but they soon came into contact with other national groups, and they discovered what all discovered: international solidarity faced all kinds of obstacles, because the national groups in general were unable to free themselves from national prejudice and animosity.1 The Czechs did not forget Munich, and were bitter against the French; they would have been equally bitter against the British, except that there were not yet any Britons in Mauthausen to be bitter against, and besides, that bitterness was assuaged by the fact that Britain was showing no sign of surrendering. The Poles remembered the Phony War, and shared the feelings of the Czechs. The Germans and the Austrians blamed the French for allowing themselves to be defeated. The Russians, when they began to arrive in late 1941, shared most of these sentiments. As for the Spaniards, with their experience of France limited to the concentration camps and indentured service, the bitterness was profound. The ignominy of the French collapse, and the reality of Vichy, made francophobia the one camp passion in which almost all the prisoners could indulge. Razola and Constante write that in the eyes of many national groups the French symbolized ‘non-intervention in Spain, the abandonment of Poland, the repudiation of treaty obligations, and the spirit of collaboration.’2 The resentment was directed not just at France in the abstract but at the French individually. The Frenchman Jean Laffitte attests to this: ‘Generally speaking, everybody hated France. We found nothing around us but indifference, contempt, and hatred. In the opinion of most of the Spaniards, we were a bunch of bastards.’3 The French survivor Pierre Daix attributes the poor showing of the French contingent to the fact that the majority of them were not in the Resistance; they had been picked up in some police raid or had simply been taken hostage in the street in reprisal for some antifascist action, and had arrived in the worst of camps terrified out of their wits.4 Another Frenchman, Paul Tillard, a journalist like Daix, singles out ‘el Negus’, the brutal and imbecile Spanish Kapo, for adding to the misery of the French prisoners out of rancour for everything he had gone through in a concentration camp in France.5 As for the Italians, they did not reach Mauthausen in any important number until after Italy’s capitulation in September 1943, and were thus the last major national group to arrive, apart from the Greek and Hungarian Jews who were marked for rapid extermination.

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To Italians, the name of Mauthausen was already of mournful note: on the side of the village opposite to the SS camp lies a military cemetery where, during Italy’s war of 1915–18, several thousand Italian prisoners of war died of starvation. The Italian prisoners now brought to Mauthausen included many communists and captured members of the Resistenza, but they also included many who were simply the passive victims of a round-up. Perhaps because the Italians arrived late, at a time when international solidarity had taken root, they were not particularly criticized, but a French survivor writes that on their arrival they tended to weep and implore the Madonna, and that such men became known to his group as ‘gonzesses’ or ‘little women’.6 The Spaniards tended to be harsher in their assessment. When the first Italians arrived, in September 1943, the Spaniards showed their resentment, and in Gusen they thrashed them.7 What tended to dilute this rancour was the growth of other animosities, and the realization that the SS derived their deepest satisfaction from such animus, which they and their agents encouraged wherever they could.8 As for the Soviets, no group at Mauthausen was larger and none more disparate. Most wore the letter R on their Red triangle, and the rest SU. The R prisoners were civilians, the SU former Red Army soldiers. Few of the R prisoners deserved the Red triangle. Many of them were Ukrainians (described by Juan de Diego as much worse educated than the Russians)9 whom the Soviet authorities had sent to prison in Kiev and Kharkov for various felonies, and who were subsequently prisoners of the Nazis. The Germans offered them their freedom if they agreed to work in Germany. They agreed. But many were accustomed to stealing, and in Germany they continued their usual business; it was for that they were thrown into Mauthausen, whether they were individually guilty or not. These youths were for the most part healthy and robust, but years of concentration camp life would turn them into degenerates. The SU captives were prisoners of war who had been given the choice of starving to death or enlisting in the army of General Vlasov. When in Vlasov’s ranks they subsequently deserted or failed to carry out orders, they too were sent to Mauthausen.10 The first prisoners from the Soviet Union, 2000 in number, arrived in Mauthausen in late 1941. They were isolated from the rest, and did not appear on the Appellplatz for the roll-call, but their arrival was reported to Ziereis on the parade ground. In front of the prisoners Ziereis reacted in astonishment and anger. No other camp kept Russian prisoners, he cried, so why should Mauthausen? Antonio García was in front of the door of Block 2 when Ziereis shouted to the Lagerältester that he had just ten days to kill all 2000. It was a job for the Kapos, he shouted, not for the SS. The Lagerältester completed the assignment within the given time, forcing the Soviets to physical exercises until they all died of exhaustion.11 Regardless of the reaction of Ziereis, Soviet prisoners continued to arrive in Mauthausen. An SS photograph that survived destruction shows a contingent of several hundred Soviet prisoners lined up on the Appellplatz in autumn 1943; they are forced to give the Nazi salute to a man standing on a dais, but one salutes with his left arm, in a bold act of defiance.12 The fate, in 1943, of another batch of Russian prisoners was revealed at the Nuremberg Tribunal. This group, comprising Soviet

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officers and political commissars, was deliberately well treated and well fed. Dressed in their uniforms, which had been cleaned and pressed for the occasion, they were taken to the quarry and told to pick up 20 kg rocks—but with four men to each rock. The SS photographer was there to take pictures, the purpose of which was to show the International Red Cross and others that the Soviet prisoners of war were being well treated. Immediately after the photos were taken, the Soviet prisoners were conducted to the gas chamber.13 Among the Spaniards, it was not easy to admit, but Amat Piniella and Alfaya have admitted it, that those of differing backgrounds (presumably political rather than social) came to blows in futile quarrels.14 At the same time, the Spaniards felt a common distaste for the Poles, who in 1940 were the only group, apart from the Germans and the Austrians, to be included among the Kapos. As we have seen, these Kapos were at first drawn entirely from the holders of the Green and Black triangles, who together formed a sort of international gang, and the selected Poles were Green.15 Even among the Poles who wore Red triangles, there were many who should have received Green; they received Red only because they had been arrested outside Poland.16 The antagonism towards the Poles was widespread among the Western Europeans, whose nickname for them was ‘cholera’, and even in 1995, at the time of the fiftieth anniversary of the Liberation, these feelings had not been forgotten. Père Michel Riquet attests to the anti-Polish sentiment in the camp.17 The main reason why they were despised, say others, is that too many of them sneaked to the SS.18 Razola describes the Polish Kapos as reactionaries who showed a strong animosity towards the Spaniards.19 Cinca Vendrell writes of the selfish behaviour of the Poles in general, who treated the Spaniards as if they were their worst enemies.20 Juan de Diego describes them as ‘super-Catholics who hated us as atheists’.21 Michel de Boüard refers to them in even harsher terms: ‘Some sort of divine egoism seems to have led them into isolation. They wanted to keep all the major posts they had acquired. Their leaders, mostly reserve officers, retained that haughty self-complacency which had in fact already cost them dearly. On the question of anti-Semitism, many of them matched the SS.’22 Gino Valenzano is equally blunt: ‘Before I arrived in Mauthausen, I had a high esteem for the Polish nation, but in Mauthausen, where I knew thousands and thousands of Poles, I changed my opinion. They were, without a single exception, so brutal that I could compare them only with the Germans. Ultra-religious they may have been, but in Gusen they stole the food of other prisoners, dooming them to death. In the last months of the war, they had the opportunity to serve as volunteers in the SS; while all others refused, almost 30 per cent of the Poles stepped forward. I am prepared to modify my accusation if a single survivor of Mauthausen or the other camps were to present a judgement on the behaviour of the Poles that contradicted mine.’23 The SS, ever on the watch for some amusement, saw the uses they could make of the ‘Puff’, or camp brothel, to inspire sexual jealousy along national lines. The brothel was housed in Block 1, on the opposite side to the Lagerschreibstube, so that it was the very first unit to be seen on the left on entering the fortress through the main gate. The prostitutes, ten in number, with another ten assigned to

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Gusen,24 were all Aryan (German, Austrian and Polish) with the exception of one gypsy.25 Again with one exception,26 all of them were young and pretty, or perhaps they simply seemed that way to clients who truly belonged in the category of the love-starved; at least they were well groomed, since they had the services of a hairdresser. Most of them had been arrested and imprisoned for criminal offences, though two of the German women were classified as politically dangerous. They had fallen into the trap of volunteering to serve a fixed term in a brothel in exchange for a promise of freedom, and now they had discovered what freedom meant in Mauthausen. They were guarded by two SS women, who were not nurses, and their sole exercise consisted of walks, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, under SS escort, in the narrow space between Blocks 1 and 2. No prisoner was allowed to approach them, and, in fact, in daylight they were rarely seen. The brothel, at Mauthausen as elsewhere, served two functions: it enabled the SS to glean information on the camp’s black market and on any organization of resistance, and it provided one more privilege for the Kapos and the Prominenten, although those who were not German were rarely admitted. This was because few of the non-German Prominenten earned money,27 and admission cost two Reichsmark; the prisoner paid in advance and received a ticket in return.28 The brothel was open every day of the week, for just two hours, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Each woman had her separate cubicle, in which she lived, and had to cater to ten men every evening. This meant that each customer had 12 measured minutes, and had no choice among the women. The customer would enter the brothel, escorted by an SS guard, through its only door, which faced the fortress wall. A wide corridor served as a waiting room, in which the Blockführer, seated behind a table to the left, examined the ticket and checked the prisoner’s number and nationality against his list. The Blockführer would then order the prisoner to lower his pants (‘Zeige dein Saufenchel!’) for a check of his penis, which might require, in the Blockführer’s considered opinion, an immediate injection. The prisoner was then given a card bearing the number of the cubicle he was to enter when his number was called. A curtain parted and he entered, into what was the woman’s home and workplace. Each was simply a cell with a bed and a chair, the cell little larger than the bed, and the bed too narrow for two people to lie on side by side. The window was barred. Only its curtain gave the visitor any sense of privacy, and when his 12 minutes were up he could find himself dragged by the ankle, naked, into the waiting room and his clothes thrown after him. One visitor at least came away from the brothel impressed by its order and decorum. Hermann Franz Josef Pister, the SS commandant at KLBuchenwald, visited the compound in 1943 and decided to introduce a similar service in his own Lager, with certain modifications which he felt could improve it.29 It was a reflection of the growing prestige of the Spaniards in the camp that a number of them were issued with tickets, which may or may not have been special tickets allowing them access only to selected women. The prisoner Paul Tillard describes how an incident, which might have remained in the realm of the burlesque, degenerated into violent conflict. The German Kapos and Prominenten,

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whose Nazi education had not all been wasted, winced at the thought that prostitutes of German racial purity should be defiled by Untermenschen, and persuaded the prostitutes to refuse to cater to the Spaniards. When the Spaniards remonstrated, the two sides fell to blows. The SS stepped in, six ticket-holders were dragged out and hanged, and the brothel returned to normal.30 Sexual desire was indeed, for the great mass of prisoners, one of the first things they learned to repress. The idea of a woman was so far from everyday reality that the whole gender seemed to belong to a different genus, one which was on loan to earth from some other planet. What the prisoner wanted most from a woman was to be physically in her arms, no more than that, to enjoy, if only for a fleeting moment, the illusion of tenderness, and to relive in his memory the central experience of his life. It was the Spaniards, and the Czechs, who restored a sense of proportion to these international resentments.31 No national group had been tested as the Spaniards had been. ‘We all knew, on the journey from France, that we were going to be sent to Nazi camps,’ says the survivor Juan de Diego, ‘but we understood that we were going to work, not to be relentlessly beaten into exhaustion.’32 The majority of the Spaniards who died at Mauthausen were essentially survivors of the Spanish Civil War, not members of the Spanish Resistance in France. But whether they came to Mauthausen in the first category or the second, they were never in doubt about their feelings on Germany. Nor did the Czechs ever lose sight of who the enemy was, and the Greens had good reason to fear them. After the ambush of Himmler’s deputy, SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, on 4 June 1942, the Czechs fell victim to terrible reprisals, in Mauthausen as everywhere else in Nazi-occupied Europe. While Heydrich still lingered between life and death, the SS responded on the first night following the attack by entering Block 9 (which was mainly but not entirely Czech) with the shout: ‘Sämtliche Tschechen heraus!’ (‘All Czechs out!’). The Czech Přemysl Dobiáš, with admirable presence of mind, suddenly turned French. ‘Qu’est-ce qui se passe? Qu’est-ce qui se passe?’ he asked excitedly of an SS, who merely shoved him out of the way. The ruse succeeded: the SS left him alone while they sought the others, whom they beat, and some to death. The rest were thrown into the Strafkompanie to work in the quarry. Even that was not enough. On their return to the fortress in the evening, they were given physical exercise until 3 a.m. and allowed just two to three hours of sleep. This lasted about a month, in which time the Czechs died like flies. In October the Nazis’ fury had in no way abated. On 23 October, a convoy of 261 Czechs, men, women and children, arrived in Mauthausen from Theresienstadt. Orders were received from the RSHA that the 160 women and girls were to be sent at once to the gas chamber. The women had arrived merry and brave, and clearly had no idea what lay ahead of them. Franz Suslak, the green-triangle Kapo of the crematorium Kommando, saw them the next day naked and huddled together at the entrance to the gas chamber, the mothers with their arms around their daughters, while Dr Krebsbach, arriving for the operation, ‘let out a devilish laugh’.33 Fassel, Schulz’s adjutant, also took a personal part.34 Of the 3000 Czechs alive in Mauthausen before the attack on Heydrich,

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there were barely 300 still living in 1944. These were almost all Prominenten, whose skills were needed, and were therefore left in their posts.35 Among these Czech Prominenten was Drahomir Barta, who arrived in the same convoy of 23 October 1942; he was later assigned to Ebensee, and the diary that Barta was able to maintain, and preserve, of the events at Ebensee is one of the most precious records that survived the war.36

6 The Spaniards as seen by others

It was the Spaniards—the ‘Spaniak’, as the SS and the other prisoners called them— who, in the opinion of all observers, came out of this supreme ordeal the best. ‘Spanier gut, Niemic nix gut’ was the pidgin German expression frequently heard in praise of the Spanish Prominenten and in contempt of the German and Austrian Prominenten.1 Unlike the Poles, the Russians, and many Germans and Austrians, every one of the Spaniards was there because he was an antifascist. Almost all were veterans of the Spanish Civil War, and they included, curiously enough, the only Negro in Mauthausen: Carlos Gray Key, a native of Spanish Morocco but born in Barcelona. Their youth—the average age of the Spaniards was 27 on their arrival— their military discipline, and their previous experience of concentration-camp life are factors that help to explain how they coped with KZ life better than any other national group.2 But there is more to it than that. Whether they expressed the libertarian recalcitrance to authority or accepted the iron discipline of the Communist Party, they understood the vital need for solidarity. Christopher Burney, who in Buchenwald formed such adverse impressions of the French, had nothing but admiration for the small group of Spaniards ‘who were models of what prisoners should be… They were always polite, helped each other and… never allowed a sign of flagging courage to escape them…. He who thinks ill of Spaniards should think again. Whatever their faults, they behave like men of dignity.’3 David Rousset, also at Buchenwald, adds his praise: ‘They comported themselves very, very well.’4 At Dachau it was the same: a Frenchman writes of their ‘exemplary dignity’, of their ‘great capacity for order and discipline’.5 Juan de Diego insists that no Spaniard even at Mauthausen committed suicide, ‘while virtually every other national group had its suicides’.6 It seems likely that the Spaniards simply had fewer suicides than the other national groups: Manuel García mentions ‘many cases’ of Spaniards hanging themselves, or running onto the wire.7 The Spaniards also understood the vital need for vigilance. The expression ‘immer gucken’, though German, was of Spanish coinage,8 and the remarkable organization they developed was soon recognized by other groups who often owed their very survival to the Spaniards.9 The Austrian Hans Maršálek was struck by the fact that the Spaniards ranged in ideological opinion from anarchism, communism, and socialism to liberal democracy, bourgeois trade unionism and support of Catalan and Basque autonomy, but they remained united by a limitless love of Spain and hatred of

THE SPANIARDS AS SEEN BY OTHERS 71

everything that Franco and Hitler represented. Noting the military discipline which enabled them to adapt to the constraints of concentration camp life better than others, Maršálek adds that they made use of another vital attribute: when they were caught out, their tactic of playing upon a certain innocent oafishness more than once earned them impunity.10 A man of Czech descent thus recognized in the Spaniards a whole brigade of Good Soldier Svejks. French survivors in particular have attested to the valour of the Spaniards. Edmond Michelet rendered a special tribute: The prisoners might have varying opinions regarding the worth of each foreign national group. But all were in agreement that the Spaniards deserved the utmost sympathy and admiration…. In their very adversity they found a source of pride which forced respect. Never did we hear them pine. A sense of modesty held them in check. Despite their political differences…they had the good manners to keep the matter to themselves…. Their behaviour was at all times exemplary. They would neither take too long in the washstands nor take more than their fair share of the rations. Their proud stoicism had a grandeur to it that derives perhaps from their country’s history.11 Dr Jean Benech writes: ‘The Spaniards distrusted us, rightly so, after what had happened in 1938 and 1939. Long before the liberation of the camp, these Spaniards won our admiration by their valour and nobility.’12 Jean Germaneau goes out of his way to pay tribute to the courage shown by the Spaniards in the Mauthausen Kommando at Hinterberg-bei-Peggau: ‘Thanks to them, we were able to obtain weapons, and with our Soviet comrades they were the impetus of our military organization.’13 Dr François Wetterwald refers to the Spanish colony as ‘the most united, the most harmonious…. They do not give their friendship freely. But when they give it, the value of it is felt at once. They do not go in for killing, nor denouncing others.’14 Père Michel Riquet pays equal tribute to the Spaniards, and especially the Spanish communists.15 The French communist Jean Laffitte, who probably owed his own survival to the help he received from Spaniards, pays his tribute to all the Spaniards—‘the best in all of Spain’ he called them, after meditating on it for 50 years,16 irrespective of political affiliation: The friendship of a Spaniard is a thing of supreme worth…. The Spanish collective is admirably organized. One of the most striking paradoxes of Mauthausen is to see a people so individualistic in temperament provide every other national group with a model of perfect organization. Such an organization obeys very simple laws. A Spaniard placed in a good post has the duty to use it at all costs to obtain food for his comrades. A Spaniard in need, whatever his need, must be able to count upon the help of the other Spaniards. All Spaniards owe one another aid and assistance, according to the principle that whoever attacks a Spaniard attacks all Spaniards…. The German prisoners do not dare to attack them. As for the Spaniard who is cast

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out of the collective—and I know only one such case—it is the equivalent of a death sentence. If, on the other hand, the Spaniards undertake to protect a non-Spaniard, that man is saved, provided that he remains worthy of their respect. There are only two sorts of men whose death a Spaniard can watch with indifference, and indeed with satisfaction: cowards and traitors.17 What better example of this than the case of Enrique García, who was chosen by the Kapos of Block 13 to be their Stubendiener. When ordered by the Kapos to strike one of his compatriots, he explained to those around him: ‘I know it means my death, but I would rather die a thousand deaths than raise my hand against a comrade.’ The language is ornate; the sentiment was sincere. He was murdered on the spot.18 The prestige of the Spaniards at Mauthausen was never in question. No national group had a stronger sense of solidarity. This was shown in the very first month, when on 28 August 1940 José Marfil Escabona became the first Spaniard to die there. Julián Mur Sánchez, of the anarchist CNT, promptly asked Bachmayer for permission to pay the respect of a minute’s silence. No such request had ever been made before. It amounted to a protest, and it left Bachmayer astonished, but he silently consented. That evening at roll-call, Mur Sánchez broke from the ranks to address the Spaniards, who continued standing at attention. While some survivors reported later that the SS jeered, others describe the SS reaction as silent amazement: an SS officer who was standing there with his arms crossed and a cigarette in his fingers allowed his arms to drop and his cigarette to fall. As for Mur Sánchez, he was transferred to Gusen, where he died.19 But his gesture was not forgotten. It was the only instance in the history of Mauthausen that a death received a public homage. An incident that affected the Spaniards in particular involved a group of Romanian Jews, including two doctors, who were former members of the International Brigades. On the morning of 11 October 1940, they arrived in the quarry and began to hug one another. Then, singing the Internationale, they moved towards the watch-tower. The SS guards screamed at them to halt. They continued forward, singing with all their might. The sound of the Internationale was heard by all in the quarry, until the machine-guns mowed the last of them down. Because the men had fought for the Republic, the Spaniards were deeply moved. That evening when they returned to their Block, they formed a group and paid the Romanians the same tribute of a minute’s silence. Such a gesture of honouring the dead was unknown, and it astonished the Kapos. It was not lost on the rest of the camp, and it served to enhance even further the Spaniards’ prestige.20 Such a solidarity on the part of the Spaniards required the willing suspension of the party quarrels which had racked the Republic so short a time before. An example of this could be seen in the case of Joaquín Olaso Piera, the ‘eye of Moscow’ who was widely held responsible for the betrayal in France of Josep Miret Muste and his resistance group into the hands of the Gestapo;21 Miret and his group were sent to Mauthausen, but so no less was Olaso Piera. As Juan de Diego describes it,

THE SPANIARDS AS SEEN BY OTHERS 73

‘we knew the charges against Olaso, but we had no proof, so we let the matter go.’ The result of all this, as the commission chaired by Jean Laffitte later confirmed, was that Spaniards were the first to give an organized form to the Resistance.22 Laffitte also describes what it meant for a French prisoner to be protected by a Spaniard: ‘I have seen Spaniards go up to one of their compatriots, a Kapo in the quarry, and give him this little warning: “You touch a French antifascist, and we’ll beat you into pulp”.’23 Sir Robert Sheppard, big, strong, and in the prime of life, was on his way to death after ten days on the Steps. What saved him was the action of the Spaniards, who like others showed great respect for the presence of an Englishman in the camp. Knowing that he would die in the normal way if he stayed on the Steps, they decided to turn him into a stonemason, teaching him the craft virtually overnight.24 At one point, Bob Sheppard was ordered by the SS to flog a fellowprisoner for a fault he had committed. Sheppard replied that he was a prisoner of war, and prisoners of war do not beat fellow-prisoners. The SS gave him the order a second time, his life being forfeit. Again he refused. The SS desisted.25 In the same year that he arrived (1943), he was transferred to Dachau, but the Spaniards remembered him, and he them. Michel de Boüard writes that in time even the SS came to respect the Spaniards: ‘Their courage and esprit, and the cohesion of the group, in spite of so much suffering, earned them what was perhaps the only consideration ever shown by the SS. The Spaniards in Block 12 were allowed to keep a little library, made up of books saved from the fire to which the worthless possessions of every Zugang were normally consigned. The library, incidentally, was open to all prisoners.’26 A library at Mauthausen! The paradox again at work.27 And there was more.

7 The paradox of entertainment

The idea that Mauthausen could include a canteen is so ludicrous that no book has ever mentioned it, for fear of creating the impression that the place had any redeeming feature. Some survivors have said it existed, but not in physical form. In fact it existed physically, as a locker in the toilets in the centre of Block 1, next to a room kept exclusively for the use of the Schutzhaftlagerführer. It was, of course, run by the SS, with the stock housed in a Block next to the reservoir outside the fortress, and was open only to German prisoners, who would place their orders with their Blockschreiber. It offered nothing except beetroot, combs, pens, ink, sometimes jam, and always cigarettes, of the Yugoslav Zora brand. The purpose was to spy on the prisoners and to serve as propaganda if the International Red Cross were ever to be admitted. For relaxation there was also football, played on Sunday afternoons, in every case but one on the Appellplatz concrete. At first the players had nothing better for a ball than a sewn-up bundle of rags, but when the SS saw the possibility of deriving entertainment from such sport they gave the prisoners a proper ball. Four, and only four, national teams were organized: German, Spanish, Czech, and Austrian, the last being allowed exceptionally to form their separate group.1 A championship was held annually, and in 1943 the Germans won, with the result that they were allowed to play the SS on the SS sportsfield. (The game ended in a tie: 2–2.) The occasion provided an opportunity for SS propaganda, designed for International Red Cross consumption. Photographs showed the players together and spectators who included prisoners, but only the Prominenten and the Kapos saw the play, and among the Spaniards apparently only Boix.2 There was other entertainment. There was a Catalan pugilist, Paulino Espallargas, who occasionally volunteered on Sunday afternoons to box on the Appellplatz. Since his opponents were usually German inmates, Paulino could count on the support of most of the crowd.3 There was also music. Apart from the music that was constantly relayed to every Block by loudspeaker, musical entertainment at Mauthausen came in two varieties. The best known and most bitterly remembered was the wretched band of eleven that provided the music at the public hangings. This Zigeunerkapelle was dissolved in September 1942, for reasons unknown. In a totally different league were two concert orchestras which the SS ordered into existence for the purpose of their own entertainment. Music in a concentration camp was carefully controlled, like everything else: the SS did all it

THE PARADOX OF ENTERTAINMENT 75

could to suppress the singing, or even humming, of patriotic songs or of songs from the Spanish Civil War, especially on those calendar days which marked national celebrations such as 14 April, 14 July or 11 November.4 At Mauthausen the responsibility for music was given to SS-Hauptscharführer Johann Ullmann, who served as Kommandoführer der Poststelle, or postmaster. The prisoner whom Ullmann selected to be both its impresario and its conductor was the German Green Georg Streitwolf, who was anything but the usual criminal thug to whom the SS turned in their selection of the Kapos.5 This appointment was certainly welcome to Streitwolf, who in the days of the Zigeunerkapelle was reduced to serving in the tandem at the back that pulled the tumbrel. Streitwolf now assembled an orchestra of some fifty musicians, with a certain Rumbauer as first violin. A second orchestra was formed in summer 1944 under the Czech Blockfriseur Jaroslav Tobiášek; this was a small ensemble which played Beethoven quartets for small audiences in the Block 1 saddlery.6 These orchestras included musicians from every fascist-occupied country in Europe, with the Spanish representation in evidence as always.7 Most of the musicians came from symphony and opera orchestras, and 20 of them from the Warsaw Philharmonic. Several were Bohemian village musicians. Some of them had brought their instruments with them when they arrived, and these had been stored in the Effektenkammer. Others were authorized to request their families to send their instruments to the camp. Music scores were similarly requested and delivered.8 At first it was the SS who selected the music, but later they left the choice to the Kapellmeister. Concerts were held on Sunday afternoons on the Appellplatz, or if raining inside a Block at the back.9 Other concerts were given at Christmas and Easter, and on the birthday of an SS officer or even of the Lagerältester; in fact, at any time the SS chose. It has been said that only a small proportion of the prisoners took advantage of the exceptional opportunity, but the reasons are in dispute.10 It seems that every type of music was played, from classical to popular. In the opinion of the eminent French survivor Père Riquet, nothing at Mauthausen was comparable, in terms of lifting morale, with the theatrical revue which Bachmayer, in August 1944, allowed the prisoners to stage. Bachmayer’s purpose, of course, was to entertain the SS, but he knew the show would be better if the prisoners were present. It was the Spaniards who arranged everything: décor, costumes, orchestra, and artistes, who included the Italian tenor Giorgetti from the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse. The show, consisting mainly of Spanish music and dances, was so well received by the SS that Bachmayer let it run for an entire week and the morale of the prisoners soared.11 But Riquet arrived at Mauthausen too late to witness another Spanish production, staged in the spring of 1942. The idea of staging a mock bull-fight originated in the mind of the Spanish shoemaker Francisco Bernal.12 Bernal put the idea to Diego, Muñoz and the Spanish communist leaders, who in turn put it to Bachmayer. The Schutzhaftlagerführer at first did not understand it, but then said, ‘Ja, ja, gut’. The show took place, as usual, on a Sunday afternoon. As normal for such entertainment, whether football or concert or theatre, the SS entered the fortress and took their seats in front of the

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prisoners who were required to stand. Did any prisoner think for a moment of trying to kill an SS? ‘To what purpose?’ is the answer given by survivors. Even a prisoner bent on suicide saw no object in it, and there is no record of any such attempt. On this occasion the SS brought their wives. The ten girls from the brothel were also given seats, well removed from the ladies. The show began. Bernal had given himself the rôle of an English tourist. Since the best known images of an Englishman were John Bull and Sherlock Holmes, Bernal came in as an odd combination of the two, dressed in ‘English golf’, with his pants rolled up, an imitation of a deerstalker cap, an English-looking coat, a cardboard camera, and a pillow for a stomach. Very tall, and at that time very thin, when the pillow fell out he looked more like George Bernard Shaw, but to the crowd he was Gandhi, and so successful was the show that from that time on Bernal was always known as Gandhi. The torero entered, and after the opening formalities in came the bull. Mounted on a bicycle, with appropriate horns, the bull was equipped with a large carrot in place of a pizzle, and as the contraption moved the carrot swung from side to side, to the hysterical delight of the spectators, not least the SS wives. Toro and torero began their passes. Dodging, with a deft veronica, the furious onrush of the handlebars, winning thereby a round of olés from an ecstatic crowd, the torero now concentrated on his coup de grâce. Then, in anything but a correct estocada, he swung at the bull’s pizzle, severing it from its base. The pizzle flew into the crowd, and as luck would have it, landed in the lap of an SS officer’s wife. The officer, seeing the bull’s orange penis in the lap of his astonished wife, collapsed with laughter; he then collapsed utterly. Two days later it was learnt that the officer had died of a respiratory failure induced by excessive mirth.13 In what surrealist setting could these things happen, when virtually the entire camp was starving to death? A prisoner could lose two-thirds of his weight within months of his arrival, and he relied on Sunday to husband his strength to survive another week. There are some simple answers: the SS could make up teams with newly arrived prisoners who were still in reasonable health, or they could favour someone like Paulino who offered them the boon of entertainment.14 The inmates, on the other hand, took part because it was in their own interest. It is unlikely that any of them had learnt it from the ancient Greeks, but many discovered for themselves that nothing keeps the soul in health better than fun and laughter. The Spaniards were always in the forefront of entertainment and merriment, whenever the smallest opportunity arose, but it infuriated the German prisoners, who did not want to laugh at anything, and who constantly and sullenly asked: ‘What is there to laugh at? We are here to die.’15 Such prisoners did not grasp the irony of the situation. Bachmayer, ‘the bloody gypsy’, was breaking every SS rule in allowing football, theatre and the like. He did it only because he, and the rest of the SS, could at times find brutality unendurably tedious, and they needed distraction. If Himmler had known about it, it would have been stopped at once.16 The prisoners thus stood to gain from this curious predicament, and no group seized the opportunity more than the Spaniards. Luis Gil, known as ‘El Peque’, who arrived in Mauthausen on 8 September 1940, became Stubendiener to ‘King Kong’ himself and lived to

THE PARADOX OF ENTERTAINMENT 77

become the president of the Spanish survivors’ association, sums up ‘the secret of their survival: ‘In the early period, we Spaniards did not have title to a single privileged post, but we knew from experience that the worst fatigue comes from letting oneself go.’17

8 The Revier, antechamber of death

Those who let themselves go doomed themselves to the care of the SS doctors in the Revier. This infirmary was constantly moved,1 until it finished up in autumn 1944 in its final position next door to the crematorium, serving it as its antechamber. Wherever it was, every prisoner soon learned never to go near it, unless absolutely unable to stand up, at which point the choice was made for him anyway. The SS doctors who supervised the Revier made their visits for the sole purpose of selecting the patients for liquidation.2 Three out of every four were selected.3 Our knowledge of what happened in the Revier derives primarily from the testimony of two prisoners, the Austrian engineer Ernst Martin (from Innsbruck) and the Czech Josef Ulbrecht (from Prague), who served as clerks to the chief medical officer, SS-Sturmbannführer Dr Eduard Krebsbach and his successors. They were responsible for keeping the records, making out the death certificates, and handling the correspondence with Berlin and the other camps. On 20 April 1945, Martin was ordered to burn all the archives, but he succeeded in hiding thirteen dossiers in a cupboard in the pharmacy, and at the time of the Liberation these dossiers were handed over to the US military authorities. On pages 568–82 of register 5, the term ‘heart failure’ was given as the cause of death of 203 persons all dying on the same day, 19 March 1945.4 Krebsbach was simply the most celebrated of seven physicians who served as SSStandortarzt at Mauthausen. Four had preceded him when he assumed the post in October 1941. Up to then he had enjoyed a solid reputation as a paediatrician in Cologne. In Mauthausen his fondness for injections earned him the name of ‘Spritzbach’, and among the Spaniards, ‘el Banderillo’.5 Less known than the injections, but totally documented, is the fate at Krebsbach’s hands of the Spanish prisoner Francisco Boluda Ferrero.6 Boluda was an extremely handsome youth, and he caught Krebsbach’s eye. The doctor therefore had him decapitated, on 10 September 1941. His skull was then emptied and cleaned, and when de Diego, in his round of duties, visited the Revier (while it was still situated in Block 5), he recognized the skull of his fellow Spaniard decorating the doctor’s desk.7 Dr Krebsbach’s assignment to Mauthausen ended abruptly on 22 May 1943, and according to the only published account, it resulted from his killing early that morning of a drunken Wehrmacht soldier who had entered his garden.8 The facts are less favourable to Krebsbach. The Wehrmacht soldier was Obergefreiter Josef

THE REVIER, ANTECHAMBER OF DEATH 79

Breitenfellner, who had lived all his life in nearby Langenstein. Breitenfellner was engaged to a local girl, Aloisa Neumüller, and was at that moment home on leave celebrating their engagement. With five or six friends they held a party at the Fuchsberger farm, close to the Hauptlager. After the party, Breitenfellner and his friend Schober, also from Langenstein, were walking home and passed through the housing development where Krebsbach and his family were living in the Gasthaus Seghart. The two were laughing and singing as they passed Krebsbach’s home. Krebsbach, woken by the noise, screamed at them to stop their noise. The two walked on, but Krebsbach suddenly appeared on the road behind them with a pistol, opening fire on them and shooting Breitenfellner in the neck. Schober succeeded in getting his friend to a hospital, where he survived for two days, during which time he recounted the event to his fiancée. After his death, the Breitenfellner family wrote a letter to Hitler, which travelled no farther than Linz. The fact that Aloisa’s father had had a quarrel with Ziereis in 1939, throwing a glass at him in a tavern, weakened the family’s case, but the killing remained a serious embarrassment for the SS.9 The Gestapo stepped in to prevent an inquest, but Krebsbach was none the less reassigned to KL-Kaiserwald, near Riga.10 Those who replaced Krebsbach, SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr Hermann Friedrich Entress and SS-Sturmbannführer Dr Waldemar Wolter, had already served as his assistants.11 Another member of the team was a dentist, SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr Wilhelm Henkel, who clearly enjoyed putting on a white gown and entering the operating room as a surrogate surgeon; Henkel was also responsible for extracting the gold teeth from the corpses. The work of Krebsbach’s team consisted of both lethal injections and non-lethal tests. Camp commandant Ziereis, on his death-bed, told Allied interrogators that the injections consisted of intravenous doses of benzene, hydrogen, calcium sulphide, Eumarcon, or Evipan-Natrium.12 In April 1942 a group of 30 Spaniards and Russians, working in the quarry, were taken to the subsidiary infirmary in Block 5 and given an injection in the region of the heart. The injections produced an inflammation which spread slowly up to the shoulder like a blue pencil mark. For the next few days the victims were half-paralysed in the head and shoulders and for two weeks even the strongest had to walk more or less on hands and knees. Every afternoon they had to report to the infirmary, where an SS doctor stuck his fingers into the painful region. Those who were too weak were taken to Block 20 where they were finished off with an intracardiac injection of benzene. Among the victims was the Spaniard Pere Vives.13 At the end of two weeks, Krebsbach asked the survivors if they still felt pain. No, they wisely replied. Apparently delighted with the success of the experiment, he gave each of them two slaps in the face and sent them out. Only seven of the thirty survived the test.14 Further evidence of what happened in the Revier is provided by two Czech prisoners, Přemysl Dobiáš and Josef Klat. Dobiáš, a graduate in law from Karl University in Prague, worked as Blockschreiber 3 in the Sanitätslager. He testifies that Sanitätsunterscharführer Otto Kleingunther, from Vienna, used to enter a Block, select two dozen of the weakest inmates, and order the Blockschreiber to send them to the Revier, where he murdered them one by one.15 Dobiáš, whose job

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it was to line up the prisoners in front of the main entrance of the Revier and to march them in, states that he was witness to over 100 murders. Kleingünter would lay the prisoner on an operating table, serve him gas, and then inject a substance into his heart. On one occasion the scene inside the Revier was observed by a corroborating witness, Josef Klat,16 who has provided the author with a sworn, notarized statement. After working in the quarry and various other Kommandos, he had been assigned in February 1943 to the garbage Kommando, composed of 12– 16 prisoners, mostly Spanish.17 Its Kapo was the German Green Fritz Lipinski, from Essen, whom Klat describes as one of the very few Green Kapos who were decent and helpful. Among other duties, this Kommando, using the garbage truck, had to collect the bone remnants from the crematorium and tip them into an alley then under construction in the Sanitätslager, and in the same or another truck distribute bread to the Blocks. In March and April 1943 the Kommando was told to drive the garbage truck to the side entrance of the Revier. At the main entrance, Dobiáš had lined up a group of 15–18 prisoners, mostly Poles and Ukrainians, whom he led, one by one, at 3–4 minute intervals, into the surgery. Between the two entrances there was an uncovered window, through which Klat briefly saw into the room and witnessed the same scene as Dobiáš. The operating table stood in the middle, immediately in front of the window, and the prisoner who had just been led in was lying on it. Kleingünter, wearing a white coat and holding a hypodermic syringe in his hand, had his back to the window. Two prisoners then entered and carried the corpse out through the side door to Klat’s garbage truck, which, when filled, was driven to the crematorium. On the one occasion that Klat peered through the window, Dobiáš motioned to him to move away, explaining to him later that if he were noticed observing the scene he too would receive an injection.18 Indeed, the SS now intended the same for Dobiáš. It was Kazik Rusinek who obtained inside information that his liquidation was imminent. The network at once set about saving him, with Frantisek Poprawka going to Kurt Pany to suggest that Dobiáš become his assistant in the Schreibstube. Dobiáš and Pany had known each other since childhood in Turnov, Bohemia, but their friendship had foundered when Pany (the son of the former garrison commander in Turnov) turned to communism. At Mauthausen, Pany had told his former friend that he would help him only if he faced death. The moment had now come, but Pany was too much the authoritarian to want an assistant for himself. Instead, he agreed to approach Bachmayer to ask him to make Dobiáš the assistant to Maršálek. This he did, immediately after D-Day, and Bachmayer agreed. Before leaving the Revier, Dobiáš had an experience of a different kind. A Czech Green by the name of Czimelda arrived in Block 3. Dobiáš had no sympathy for Greens, but he helped him in his sickness as far as he could. He then noticed that as Czimelda began to recover his health, he was always the first to try to help others, the more so the more they were sick. Dobiáš took him aside and asked who he was. He replied that he was the best safe-cracker in all Czechoslovakia. After the liberation he returned to safe-breaking and was caught in the vaults of the national bank, going for the gold.19

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Another doctor who served under Krebsbach at Mauthausen was Heribert Ferdinand Heim, who in the 1990s was one of the leading Nazi war criminals still at large. An Austrian and graduate of the University of Graz, Heim arrived in Mauthausen on 8 October 1941, when he was 27, and stayed only until 29 November of that year. Seven weeks were enough for him to establish a reputation. Benzene injections and mock operations20 kept him busy, but Heim is especially remembered for a penchant which he shared with Krebsbach. The case concerned two Dutch Jews, aged 18–20, whom he selected from among an incoming contingent for their perfect teeth. Forced to undergo appendectomies that they knew to be unnecessary, the two youths died in agony, whereupon Heim personally cut off their heads, then boiled and cleaned their skulls. One of the skulls was given to a colleague to decorate his desk; the other Heim kept as a paperweight on his own.21 As Mauthausen grew, so did the Revier. In mid-1944, when its population reached 5000, it moved into the site which today houses the museum. It consisted of eight Blocks, with each Block crammed with at least 500 patients sleeping up to 12 to a bed, or four to each of the three bunks making up the bed. They were packed head to foot, like sardines, and only patients on the top bunk had the space to sit up. Since many were too weak to move, they lived in one another’s excrement. Hunger might drive them to bite the feet of their neighbour. This could result in a fight in which the bunk collapsed and then the bed, with predictable consequences. Those suffering from contagious diseases, including dysentery, scabies, pneumonia, bronchitis, diphtheria and tuberculosis, were all assigned to the same Block. On 21 March 1945, when a new compound known as Lager III was opened, the total sick amounted to 19 per cent of the total population of the camp: 16 437 out of 83 249 men and 2295 women.22 Another survivor, the Spaniard Lázaro Nates, described his predicament when he contracted gastric hernia. He was told by the Czech inmate Pro fessor Podlaha that he would die if he did not undergo an operation. Nates did not want an operation: he knew all about the SS doctors and the Holznarkose. But Podlaha insisted, saying that he could perform the operation himself. Podlaha had arrived in Mauthausen on 3 February 1942. If he had arrived earlier, he would have shared the fate of the other doctors who were all sent to the quarry to die. Though transferred to Gusen in July 1942, he was saved by Himmler’s decision at that time to reduce the mortality rate. He was therefore quickly recalled to the Hauptlager, and there the SS doctors called upon him to operate on the wife of Lagerführer Ziereis, whose life he saved.23 This success won him the respect of the SS and the permission to perform other operations. Nates therefore agreed. He was given only a local anaesthetic but he knew he had to be grateful for that. Since the anaesthetic was only local he had the rare opportunity to assist at his own major operation, watching the SS doctors as they watched the professor. On another occasion Nates was suffering from tonsillitis. Again he was reluctant to report to the Revier, but he did so, and was treated by an Austrian prisoner working as a nurse. The nurse extracted his tonsils with

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an instrument more appropriate for picking up coke for the fire, but Nates nevertheless survived.24 We have said that the SS doctors were not there to treat prisoners but only to murder them or experiment on them, and it was therefore up to the prisonerdoctors to treat the prisoners—or to select the weakest for the gas chamber.25 Exceptions might be made, however, if the SS needed a prisoner to live. Manuel García, for example, underwent an operation in 1943 prior to his transfer, as a building designer in the Baubüro, from Mauthausen to Gusen. The operation was performed not by Podlaha or by another prisoner but by an SS-Scharführer.26 Presumably, while an SS medical officer would not deign to perform an operation in earnest on a prisoner, it was another matter for an SS NCO who was merely an assistant and in need of practice. The Spaniards who survived were not likely to forget, or ever forgive, any Spaniard in the Revier who participated in the lethal injections. Such a one was Ramón Verge Armengol, a native of Jesús, a village near Tortosa, who remains, 50 years after the Liberation, despised by almost every Spanish survivor, and yet, curiously, those who denounce him in print avoid referring to him by name.27 The one Spaniard who had a kind word to say of him, the photographer Antonio García Alonso, probably owed his life to him, but he is willing to admit that Verge was probably responsible for the death of his friend Antonio García Cano (who was no relative). ‘He killed simply to save his own life,’ García Alonso finally admitted.28 As for Mauthausen’s gas chamber, it was designed and installed on Krebsbach’s orders29 by SS-Hauptsturmführer Erich Wasitzky, an Austrian who served as the camp’s pharmacist from 1941 to 1945. It was intended to be an exact replica of the real shower room.30 The three prisoners in the Baukommando who were assigned to the construction of its floor were all Spaniards, who had no means of knowing for what purpose the construction was intended.31 The gas chamber, however, was not well designed. At the time it was first used, in March 1942,32 the doors opened inwards. As a result, when the victims rushed to the doors they clogged up the entrance as they died, and the SS had difficulty in getting in to clear the corpses. This happened only once: the SS ordered the door hinges to be changed so that the doors opened outwards. The Spaniard Juan Gil was among those who worked on the alterations.33 The supply and administration of the gas were also personally supervised by Dr Wasitzky, with SS-Hauptscharführer Martin Roth (in charge of the crematorium) assisting him,34 and with either Niedermayer or Trum responsible for marshalling the victims into the chamber.35 Vilanova gives, without proof, a total of 499 Spaniards gassed at Mauthausen (and as many more shot in the back of the neck).36 Roth’s crematorium was conveniently next door, though Roth took his orders not from Bachmayer but from the Gestapo chief Schulz.37 Since a single crematorium could not keep pace with the supply of corpses, two more were added. ‘The acrid odour of burnt roast’, as the ‘nose-witness’ Paul Tillard called it,38 permeated not only the camp but also a wide vicinity. Whenever the wind was right, reports Lázaro Nates, who worked in the village, Mauthausen’s villagers could smell it.39 The same was true even in Linz.40 At night anyone could see the flames

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shooting through the chimney.41 But all three of Mauthausen’s crematoria were considerably smaller than those in the killing factories of Treblinka and the like, and many thousands of corpses were buried in mass graves.42

9 The quarry and the 186 steps

Each morning, at the appointed hour, the Kommandos marched out of the fortress, or inner camp, with their caps off and their eyes turned left as they passed the main gate, in deference to the Kommandant. By far the largest of the Kommandos was assigned to the granite quarry owned by the Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke (DEST), which was now in the hands of the SS. This quarry (Steinbruch DEST), situated about a kilometre from the fortress, forms an enormous circle, or well, some 350 metres in diameter, partly surrounded by walls 40–75 metres in height. In summer, the sun is reflected by the granite cliff; in winter, the cliff serves to turn the wind into a cyclone.1 What is today the quarry base was in 1940 a hill of granite at a level with the surrounding cliff, and what is today the granite staircase was at first a ramp. Each morning, at the appointed hour, the quarry echoed to the rhythmic beat of thousands of wooden clogs on the granite steps, as the army of slaves began a new day’s descent into hell. That staircase has become, more than any other single travail imposed by the Nazi system, the symbol of its martyrs’ path to Calvary.2 The staircase consisted up until 1942 of 160 randomly placed, loosely piled rocks or boulders of uneven height, so that all the steps were irregular and some of them were 40 centimetres in height. From 1942 they numbered 186. Simply to climb them at a military pace, under the bludgeons of the SS and the Kapos, required an immense effort; no halts were permitted. Add to that ordeal the effect of a diet of programmed starvation. Add to that the fatigue of working through the day, whatever the climate, under the blows, dragging the granite rocks, loading them into the tip trucks, without a moment’s pause except at noon. Imagine then what strength remained for the march back to the fortress up the steps, each prisoner weighed down by a rock of 20 kg, or the corpse of a comrade (since nothing was left behind),3 or the lunchtime soup tureens (the Kessel which carried 50 litres and weighed over 35 kg empty). The survivor Jean Laffitte gives to the line of climbing prisoners the vivid metaphor of a monstrous caterpillar whose rear legs strive to keep up with the rest, especially once its front legs reach the top and increase their pace on the flat. That agonizing climb, seeing nothing but the legs of the prisoners in the three rows ahead, staggering desperately to keep in line, and expecting to be singled out at any moment by the SS, being tripped, perhaps, and sent tumbling to the bottom with one’s rock, there to be beaten to death—this was the experience that lay behind the cold inanimate statistics which report that ‘thousands died’.

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The inhuman work that the quarry represented was reserved from 1944 for those in the Strafkompanie. The year 1943 was a period of transition, but in 1940–2 almost all the prisoners were assigned to it.4 There were two types of workers: the skilled and the manual. The former were employed on the dynamite, the hydraulic rock crushers, and the pneumatic drills; they were not struck or harshly treated unless they made errors or failed to maintain the pace. The latter, which made up the mass, were put to loading and unloading. On an average, over 2000 prisoners were at work on the quarry every day, and these were at the mercy, as we have seen, of Grimm and Spatzenegger. There was always an element of blind chance.5 To survive Mauthausen it was essential to avoid assignment to the quarry, mainly on account of the 186 steps. Most prisoners climbed the staircase once a day, but many climbed it more: at least two Spanish survivors, Juan de Diego and Sebastian Mena, attest that their groups climbed it daily ten to twelve times, five or six times in the morning and five or six in the afternoon.6 The SS would sometimes find amusement in staging a version of the travail of Sisyphus, ordering the prisoners to take down the same rock which, at such cost, they had carried up.7 The historian yearns to know, the humanitarian shrinks from knowing, how big, how heavy was the rock. We have seen that there was a standard size weighing 20 kg, which is to say that in most cases there was no selection to make. The rocks were cut in the quarry, of the same size, but some of smaller size might also be needed and available. In so far as logic had a place in Mauthausen, the smaller rocks would go to the smaller prisoners. Spaniards in particular, then if not now, were physically small, however sturdy. But to select a rock the SS might think too small would be a most dangerous gamble. If a prisoner’s rock was deemed too small, he was given first a beating and then a supplementary rock.8 The trick was to try to make the rock look biggest from the outside.9 What then might the minimum be? Juan de Diego gave this eloquent answer to the brutal question: I cannot say. It is impossible to make an accurate estimate. When you had to lift one of them, it seemed bigger than a house. But sometimes I had to carry up a 50 kg sack of cement. You know what that weighs, because the weight is written on it. And unlike a rock, which you carry on a Trage or shoulder trestle, there is no easy way to carry a sack.10 The British SOE officer Pierre Le Chêne describes how he also had to carry these sacks, which weighed as much as he did (since he had lost half his original weight); and when it rained, the sack split.11 The all-time record was a rock weighing 140 kg which a Polish Jew was forced to carry the entire kilometre from the quarry to the camp. The man died, of course, as he reached the gates, but the SS thought it marvellous: they threw the corpse into the crematorium and placed the rock in the museum.12 Nor should it be forgotten that the greatest strain, after the heart and the back, was upon the feet. The wooden clogs were rarely a fit, or even a pair. The cloth strap was often too tight, or else so loose that the shoe fell off. The worst

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experience, in the memory of one survivor, took place at the top of the steps: ‘The SS would then chase us with rifle butts. We often lost our clogs, and had to run barefoot on the granite gravel, which was so painful that some men screamed. We returned with the soles of our feet in blood, and infection often followed.’13 Physical condition and morale are the only factors to explain how some survived the quarry. The Frenchman André Morel says that he had no employable skill and did nothing but work in the quarry,14 but Morel is a superb athlete who, barely two years after the Liberation, was selected to play in the French national rugby team. Juan de Diego attributes his own survival in part to never trading his soup for cigarettes, as many Spaniards were tempted into doing. Those who laboured in the quarry with the Strafkompanie, of course, were in a different category, for they were simply under sentence of death, labour being a mere alternative to death by hanging or the gas chamber. Death for these rarely took more than a few days: of the 60 men in the company who started out on a certain Sunday, only two were left alive on the following Saturday.15 To be assigned to the Strafkompanie it was sufficient to break a rule, fall victim to a Kapo’s whim, or be Jewish, though for the 20 000 Jews who entered Mauthausen and Gusen, there was a special Judenkommando. The SS were hard put to think out any further humiliations. Working naked in the cesspits was one device, though the Scheisserkolonne was not exclusively for Jews.16 Another was to require the Jews to join in the chant that the SA had launched 20 years earlier in the Bierkeller of Bavaria: in marching out or in passing an SS, the Kapo would call, ‘Wer ist an unserem Unglück schuld?’ to which the Jews would shout back, ‘Die Juden!’17 By July 1944 there were only 22 left alive, and the last of these, a boy aged 17, was murdered in August 1944 at the bottom of the quarry steps.18 To describe Spatzenegger or any member of the SS as more brutal than another makes for an odious comparison, when the gentlest spirit in its uniform would not balk at anything his imagination might contrive. A favourite noonday sport was to watch the ‘parachutists’. These included prisoners who were pushed off the cliff by the SS, to drop on to the rocks below, or drown in the pond. They also included those who took their lunch break to climb the steps, and put an end to their suffering by leaping from the top. A number of Dutch Jews were so abominably treated that their will to survive, an example to any group, was crushed, and they decided to emulate their ancestors at Masada in AD 73 by committing group suicide, in the same collective leap.19 An eye-witness, Ramiro Santísteban, reports that all died except one, whose fall was slowed by several bushes, and when he landed he staggered to his feet. ‘He then dragged himself up the steps again, and jumping a second time from the cliff he did it properly. We Spaniards admired this. He knew he was going to die, but he showed the Germans he was unafraid, and still master of his fate.’20 The SS were therefore used to suicides, when on 13 December 1943, two French Jews, the brothers Schwartzenberg, made what was to be their last climb up the steps. The brothers were still schoolboys, too young to be, as their 19-year-old brother Léon was, in the French Resistance, but Schulz made it known he wanted to see them dead. How they died has been told in two quite different accounts. Jo

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Attia, a gangster from Marseilles who, after the Liberation, returned to criminal life, but at Mauthausen won the respect of many, has given what has been accepted as an eyewitness account. The brothers are mounting with their rocks at close of day when Raymond, the older but smaller and weaker of the two, realizes, at precisely the 144th step, that he can go no further. He veers to the right on to the ledge, 20 metres long and two metres wide, which had been hewn into the granite cliff; letting the rock drop into the abyss, he remains standing there, with his hands on his hips, in a posture of defiance. The human chain stops its climb. Jacques slowly lowers his own rock to the ground, then joins his brother on the ledge. Even for Mauthausen this is a moment of drama. The Kapos pause in their brutal swings and eye the SS with malign curiosity. The SS are, just for an instant, taken aback by this act of rebellion. Now they move in unison. SS-Unterscharführer Johann Vinzent Gogl, in command of the steps, cannot believe his luck. Two Jewish brothers can be made to fight on the ledge, with survival the reward for the stronger. The brothers respond to the challenge by stripping off their Drillich tunics. It promises well. ‘Fight, fight!’ roars the Unterscharführer. The brothers stand facing each other, motionless. The SS, impatient for action, begin stoning them. ‘Fight, dogs, fight!’ The brothers, insensible to the stones, move slowly towards each other, meet in a last embrace, then, locked together not in combat but in a love that defies hate, step from the ledge into the void, from life into death. Was that all that happened on that December night? Attia’s account is contradicted by another, which is more than an account, more even than a myth. If a myth is a public dream, a symbol that stirs psychological energy and reflects a people’s sorrows, joys, and hopes, then a collective hallucination is a myth made flesh. For only collective hallucination can explain the strength of another belief, that the brothers somehow enticed two of the SS onto the ledge, that they offered the SS their hands as if in a final act of forgiveness, that the SS thought it amusing to shake hands with a Jew about to kill his brother or be killed by him; and that the brothers held on to the Nazis with all the strength they had, lurching backwards, somersaulting almost, suspended so it seemed in air before they plunged into the yawning gulf below.21

10 Local Kommandos

Apart from the quarry, there were two other local Kommandos in which the first contingents of Spaniards were employed. In spring 1941, the SS established the Siedlungsbau, a Kommando whose task it was to build villas for the SS officers. The first of these were situated in a picturesque site on a hill overlooking the Danube, near the fork of the road running from Mauthausen to Gusen. On 1 August 1941 construction began on another 11 chalets in the area north of Mauthausen village.1 Some 350 Spaniards were employed in it, including many skilled workers. The conditions were particularly harsh, and the majority of the Spaniards died. Little is known about the Kommandoführer other than his effeminacy,2 but much is spoken about his Kapo, the Austrian-Czech Karl Matucher, who served in the post from the Kommando’s inception. Matucher embarked on two separate courses of adventure, and it is probable that one adventure was exposed only as a result of his being caught in the other. His background being in crime, he received the coveted green triangle as a German BV: the finest prisoner insignia obtainable. In his privileged post he succeeded, on the one hand, in building a lucrative business in adulterated alcohol. On the other, among the Kommando’s duties was to work occasionally in the gardens of the SS chalets and even to enter the officers’ homes in order to fix their electricity or their plumbing. It was common knowledge in Mauthausen that Matucher was sleeping with more than one SS wife, while it was also said that he and his Schreiber, who was well known for his homosexuality, were on intimate terms with certain SS men. In September 1943 Bachmayer discovered a letter written by Matucher addressed to Streitwieser’s wife Käte. The letter compromised both. On 2 September, Matucher, his Schreiber and two other Kapos were chained to the wailing wall, where Asta and Lord together began ripping them apart. Matucher’s agony went on for two days.3 The other local Kommando was the Donaulinde, located in the village itself. The work consisted of unloading granite rocks brought in by truck from the quarry; the rocks then had to be lifted on to a Trage, or stretcher, which the men, working in pairs, carried down a steep narrow gangplank to the barges moored on the riverside, loading the rocks inside. On one particularly cold day in early 1941, with the Spaniards forced to work barefoot, the work proved too much for many of them. They slipped and fell into the water. The SS opened fire, and the Danube carried

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off the corpses.4 All of this took place in full view of the worthy villagers of Mauthausen.

11 The Nebenlager

Can the mind conceive anything more monstrous than Mauthausen Mutterlager? The contender is Mutter Mauthausen’s even uglier daughter Gusen. Razola has written of Mauthausen-Gusen, that nothing can be said about KZ life elsewhere that is not gentle in comparison,1 and he describes the shock of those sent from Mauthausen when they found conditions at Gusen even worse.2 Since Ziereis controlled every one of the sixty or more Nebenlager in Austria from his base in Mauthausen, there was no reason why any particular camp should have a worse reputation than another, or why an external Kommando should be worse than the mother camp. All prisoners assigned to Gusen were under the direct command of Bachmayer, as they were at Mauthausen. From survivors who knew both, however, the story that emerges is that most of what happened at Gusen happened at Mauthausen too, but the tempo at Gusen was speeded up, and the cruelty, in some respects, refined. The village of Gusen (attached to the larger village of Langenstein) is situated only six kilometres from Mauthausen on the main road from Linz to Vienna. The construction of the first camp at Gusen was begun in December 1939, by German and Austrian prisoners under the command of Streitwieser. The original purpose of the camp was the exploitation of the quarry to the north of the camp; the quarry, and the brick factory attached to it, were, as at Mauthausen, in the ownership of the Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke. The original panorama of Gusen, then, was no different from that elsewhere: quarries attacked with dynamite, and rocks transported by columns of slaves. But Gusen was Mauthausen at higher speed. Those at Mauthausen too weak or sick to work were told that they were being sent to Gusen to be looked after.3 This was part of the SS play on words, such as ‘resthome’ and ‘convalescence’. From their arrival in Gusen, all prisoners were tested for their strength. The prisoners were made to run, and the weakest eliminated at once. Of the first 10 000 men sent to Gusen, 3000 were selected for instant liquidation. It was the forms of liquidation that Gusen adopted that made it so well remembered. The local commandant responsible for Gusen (with a staff of some 2000 SS) was SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Chmielewski, who arrived there from Mauthausen on 25 May 1940 (when the camp opened) and stayed until October 1942, when he was transferred to KL-Herzogenbusch in Holland.4 Described as a warrior type, he was tall, lean, dark-complexioned, deep-voiced—and usually drunk.5 His successor in

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1942 was SS-Hauptsturmführer Franz Seidler, who retained the post until the end of the war, all the while replacing the random brutality of his predecessor with something closer to the Prussian model.6 The results are impressive: a survivor as authoritative as Roger Heim attests that Seidler took a personal part in the killing of 6000 prisoners.7 In his private hobbies, Seidler shared the taste of Chmielewski: Ziereis himself admitted, on his death-bed, that both had screens and book covers made from human skin, a preference being given to skin tattooed in attractive designs.8 The precise details that are available regarding most of the SS officers at Mauthausen Mutterlager are absent in the case of those in the Kommandos, Gusen included,9 but one appointment speaks volumes: Hans Killermann, the man who used to sit on the stool in Mauthausen’s Bunker, was transferred to Gusen in 1942 with a promotion to Arbeitsdienstführer.10 As for the Kapos, in every camp in Austria, without exception, they remain mere shadows. Rudolf Fiegl, who was later brought to trial, is clearly an exception.11 It is rare to find a Kapo referred to by more than a nickname, and there may well have been more than one nickname for the same Kapo, and more than one Kapo with the same nickname. We know only that the general principle remains the same: the posts of privilege were in the hands of the Greens, and at Gusen the Block leaders were all German Greens.12 The first contingent of Spaniards arrived at Gusen on 24 January 1941.13 The first Spaniard to die there succumbed two days later.14 At that time Gusen, like Mauthausen proper, was not yet complete, and the Spaniards were used to build a wall around the electrified barbed-wire perimeter.15 Since Gusen stood on the edge of the main road, the primary purpose of the wall was to provide the SS with the privacy they needed. As long as the wall was still under construction, logic required that the SS moderate their treatment of the prisoners, but this was in no way apparent. Santiago Raga, who worked on the construction of the wall, saw Austrian children passing every morning on their way to school. They were eyewitnesses to the daily crimes. Never once did Raga see a child or anyone else stop or show the slightest emotion or the smallest sign of indignation at the sight of prisoners mercilessly beaten or electrocuted on the wire.16 Apart from that, with or without a wall, Gusen’s crematorium, under the command of SS-Oberscharführer Karl Wassner, burned on and on through the years within sight and smell of every passerby. Among the forms of liquidation employed at Gusen, the method known to the SS as Badeaktion was unknown in any other camp. The idea was probably born in the brain of SS-Hauptscharführer Heinz Jentsch,17 since he became known as the ‘Bademeister of Gusen’, but it was readily endorsed by commandant Chmielewski. Unlike those at Mauthausen, the showers at Gusen had a protective wall which allowed the water, when the drains were blocked, to rise to a level of 20 centimetres. One night in December, a group of tuberculosis victims and other sick were driven or dragged out of the Revier and into the showers. They were held for at least 30 minutes under the icy water. An SS-Oberscharführer known only as ‘Dracula’ stood in his shirt-sleeves, holding a branch, flailing those who fell until they drowned,

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then flailing those still standing until they fell too. Two of the victims were Spaniards, of whom one was a youth aged 21 whose last cries were ‘Justicia! Justicia! Jus…’ Most of those who did not drown froze to death. Those who were stronger and survived the night succumbed soon afterwards to collapse of the lungs. This method of eliminating the sick and the exhausted was then continued with other groups, of 100 at a time.18 The legendary showers of Gusen were still considered, by the camp’s actuarial wizards, to be too time-consuming. Other methods were tried. Night after night in winter, 150 men were left outside Block 32, naked and starving. The cold did the work: more than half died in the night, the rest, the following day. It was in Block 32 that a group of a dozen Spaniards were murdered by Chmielewski and his adjutants in the course of a routine inspection. To the disgust of the Spaniards, their fellow countryman Tomás, who was a Stubekapo, served as an accomplice.19 Of the 3846 Spaniards who arrived in Gusen in 1941, only 444 were still alive in January 1944.20 Life expectancy in the period 1940–1 was about six months from the date of arrival, and the average weight of prisoners for the period 1940–2 (these being the only periods for which such statistics are available) was about 40 kg.21 A later and alternative method of liquidation was introduced by SSHauptsturmführer Dr Helmuth Vetter, whose previous research in the fields of sulfa drugs and typhus had been conducted in the laboratories of Dachau and Auschwitz, respectively. On his arrival in Gusen in 1944, he made tuberculosis his principal study. The experiments, which he recorded and which have been preserved, consisted of injecting phlegmonic pus into the lungs of healthy prisoners and observing the reaction. Each experiment ended with Vetter forcing his victim to run until he dropped from exhaustion, whereupon Vetter dispatched him with an injection of benzene.22 Such injections were given also to sick Spaniards from Blocks 13 and 31. Injecting the benzene into the lung rather than into the heart or stomach prolonged and intensified the agony, but if death took too long and Vetter grew impatient, he or a Kapo would finish off the victim by strangling him or by crushing his skull.23 That there could ever have been entertainment at Gusen is so incongruous that no writer has ever wanted to mention it, for fear that merely to speak of it would call into question the hideous reality of Gusen’s daily life. Nevertheless, the Spaniard Marcelino López, from Toledo, who had arrived in Mauthausen on 24 January 1941 and was transferred to Gusen after only 20 days, testifies that at Gusen there was football, and that football saved his life. Football at Gusen, as in the Hauptlager, was played on the Appellplatz, on Sundays. There was no SS sports field at Gusen— or in any other Nebenlager—but at Gusen the SS entered the camp to watch the prisoners play. There were four teams in the tournament, one of which was Spanish. López had played football as a boy, and he was good enough—and more importantly, fit enough, since he had only recently arrived in Gusen—to be selected for the Spanish team. Any prisoner providing a measure of entertainment for the SS received the privilege of higher rations, and since López set out to learn basic German he succeeded in 1944 in inveigling a coveted post as servant in the SS

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privates’ mess, receiving into the bargain a smart clean Drillich. As a Prominenter, his survival was to some extent assured, provided only that he could hold on to his post, and this he did, until 5 May 1945.24 The economic needs of Nazi Germany from 1942, and the massive arrival of prisoners in Mauthausen from that same year, made Himmler decide to build a new camp, Gusen II, code-named Bergkristall, three kilometres away at St Georgen, on the other side of the road towards Linz; and then another, the much smaller Gusen III, eight kilometres away at Lungitz.25 The command of these subsidiaries was given to SS-Obersturmführer Max Pausch. The purpose of all three camps now was to build vast underground tunnels, invulnerable to Allied air attack, in which workshops and assembly lines were then set up to produce sub-machine-guns and aircraft parts for Steyr-Werke and Messerschmitt AG. The construction project was entrusted to Zivilmeister Leopold Trauner. The preparatory work was done by the Kellerbau Kommando (or the ‘death group’ as it was known) of Gusen I, with the sole entrance to the complex constructed behind the village church. These first tunnels were four kilometres in length, and were used especially for the production of Messerschmitt-109 fighters. As we shall see, Gusen II was not the only Kommando designed for underground factories, but the softness of the soil at St Georgen explains why Gusen was the most ambitious of them all: the construction plan, drawn up in January 1944 by its designer and director Karl Fiebinger, shows an overall area of 50 000 square metres (12 acres), or 28 kilometres of tunnels and halls (with another 22 kilometres projected), compared with only 12 kilometres at Ebensee. The camp of Gusen II, to supply the slave power for Bergkristall, was separated from Gusen I only by a large field used for growing potatoes, and was five kilometres to the west of St Georgen where the prisoners worked. Bergkristall consisted of two separate Kommandos: Bergkristall-Bau, which served the SS, and Bergkristall-Fertigung, which served the Luftwaffe. Many of the guards in Gusen II were airmen, and if they changed later to SS uniforms they were still wearing Luftwaffe uniforms when they arrived. The fact that Bergkristall-Fertigung was in the hands not of the SS but of the honour-loving Wehrmacht, led Roger Heim, of the Institut de France, to attend a tribunal after the war to insist upon that single point.26 The Bergkristall project became of capital importance to Messerschmitt when Allied bombers in 1943 heavily damaged its main plant in Regensburg. From then on, 35 per cent of all its fighter production derived from the labour of two concentration camps, Flossenbürg and Gusen, and by far the most valuable of these was Gusen II. Historians, including Hans Maršálek, have said that this huge underground installation, probably the largest and most modern in Nazi Germany, never actually entered production, but new evidence proves the contrary. A report compiled by US Intelligence in September 1945 and declassified in February 1990 shows that Messerschmitt AG sent its engineers, its foremen and its skilled workers to supervise the work of the slaves, and that the project was so secret that none of Messerschmitt’s employees, on pain of death, could reveal to their families the place and purpose of their work. Their purpose was to produce the first jet aircraft in the

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world, the Messerschmitt-262, and the complete plane except for the wings was produced on an assembly-line system inside the tunnels. The project was designed to produce some 1250 Me-262s per month for ten years, or 150 000 by 1955! Despite its late start (March 1944), it had produced no fewer than 987 fuselages by 1 May 1945. At first, when Gusen II opened on 9 March 1944, the prisoners had to run the five kilometres from the camp to the tunnel entrance at St Georgen, but later they were transported there each day in a train and on a track specially built for the purpose; each flat-top wagon carried 100 prisoners. Arms production moved ahead in the subterranean galleries while the expansion work continued. What distinguished Gusen II was its unbreathable air. The dust never dispersed or settled, and was so thick that the men operating the pneumatic drills had to use headlamps. The deafening roar of the drills reverberating in the tunnel and the lack of oxygen meant that the prisoners were quickly exhausted.27 The SS themselves decided that no man could work effectively in the tunnel for more than eight hours, so the schedule operated on three teams working round the clock. But the 16 hours of repose were spent in the tunnel, in that air and noise, so that the prisoners’ usefulness as slaves was soon used up.28 About 100 died in the tunnel every day, and these were brought back, every day, to the crematorium at Gusen I. Most of the prisoners in Gusen II were Soviets and Italians, but Spaniards were also present, and José Sanz has described his animus with the Spanish Kapo Asturias.29 As for Gusen III, which opened on 16 December 1944, its prisoners worked in barracks, except for those working on the project to connect Lungitz by tunnel with St Georgen, eight kilometres away. Precisely because Gusen III was the last to open, conditions there are said to have been the worst of all.30 Among the prisoners sent to Gusen was Pierre Serge Choumoff, a Frenchman of mixed East European extraction who was working as a wireless technician for the Thomson Group in Paris when, in November 1940, he entered the Resistance, supplying his network with vacuum tubes for a radio transmitter. Caught by French police in March 1942, he was handed over to the Gestapo, deported to Mauthausen in April 1943, and transferred to Gusen I. In June 1944, his scientific training earned him a post in the electricity workshop, where he had to repair radio sets under the supervision of three SS sergeants. Although forbidden, under pain of death, to listen to any news broadcasts, he too, like Istvan Balogh in the Hauptlager, was able to listen in a few times a week and spread the news discreetly. On 24 August 1944, for instance, he heard the announcement of the liberation of Paris. Of no less interest to the inmates was the BBC broadcast in April 1945 reporting the abandonment by SS troops of a concentration camp near Leipzig; the SS set light to the camp, shooting those who tried desperately to escape. It was an omen of what those in Mauthausen and its subsidiaries could expect. Spaniards, for their part, were to be found virtually everywhere in the Austrian KZ constellation, which comprised not merely Nebenlager like Gusen I, the biggest, but units as small and sophisticated as Redl-Zipf, engaged in the production of counterfeit money, or Schloss Mittersill, an SS research institute which made use of

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no more than 15 women.31 The next Kommando to open after Gusen I was at Steyr, 30 kilometres south of Mauthausen, beginning operations in the spring of 1941 and serving the Steyr-Werke munitions industry; it was composed of 49 Spaniards and one Romanian (a certain Miron, who had fought in the International Brigades). At first the men were transported there and back to Mauthausen in trucks, but in 1942 the Kommando was enlarged, with 300 more Spaniards sent there on 6 January under a certain SS officer Müller and nine German greentriangle Kapos.32 Their task was to build a factory for Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG, to be used for the production of aircraft engines, aircraft cockpits, ball-bearings, trucks, caterpillar tracks for tanks, and sub-machine-guns. The Steyr Kommando was thus the first to use prisoners in war industries, and the Spaniards were the first to be so employed. Müller, the Kommandoführer, was young, good-looking, and robust, but at 25 years of age he was already a pale shadow of his earlier life when he served as a model for Hitlerjugend. Only his fanatical hatred had stayed with him, and this he directed at the Spaniards. During that first hard winter of 1941–2, he would give up his own Sundays at home with his wife for the pleasure of tormenting them further.33 Among the Spaniards at Steyr was Baldomero Chozas, by now transferred from the Hauptlager, where he had worked on the construction of the gas chamber. The Spanish network succeeded in finding Chozas the post of Ordenanz or servant to the Rapportführer.34 Although Chozas never learnt, or cannot remember, the name of the Rapportführer (other than a sound like Bresten), a certain human relationship formed between them. Chozas had the impression that he came from a wealthy family; it seemed that he liked Spain, and Spaniards, and he called Chozas by his nickname ‘Queso’. As an orderly, Chozas was responsible for cleaning the Rapportführer’s office, not his living quarters, but since his office was outside the camp, it meant that Chozas passed through the gate each day. The work included brushing his uniform and cleaning his boots—a factor which gives the lie to the claim of the grand self-promoter Mariano Constante, who insists that no prisonerorderly was permitted to touch the uniform of an SS. The Rapportführer had a fiancée named Rita who was the daughter of the pharmacist in Steyr. She would sometimes visit him in his office while Chozas was there, and sometimes Chozas and Rita would be there alone. She would often tell him about her father’s pharmacy, and though he never saw it, she gave him the address: Adolf Hitler Platz, 1. He would talk with her in his poor German, in tones if not in terms which must have made an impression upon her. Chozas has written poetry all his life, even in captivity, and his poems have merit. Chozas sometimes discussed poetry with the Rapportführer, but more often it was with Rita. She never entered the camp, but he talked to her about what happened inside it, and he cried in doing so, and she cried with him to hear it. The respect that had formed between Chozas and the Rapportführer could make the difference between life and death. On one occasion a friend of Chozas was in the Revier and was about to be murdered by injection. Chozas rushed to the Rapportführer, who in turn rushed to the Revier to prevent it. Later, when the

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Rapportführer received orders to move to the Hauptlager, he knew his departure could endanger the life of Chozas. Before leaving he told the camp’s Lagerältester: ‘You take good care of Queso, do you hear? I’ll be coming back to Steyr!’ It was a warning, but it was not heeded. Chozas knew that the German Greens and Blacks deeply resented a Spaniard in the post, and in no time at all they arranged his dismissal, with a sentence of eight days in the Strafkompanie into the bargain. But at that point he managed to obtain a post in the SS kitchen. In a concentration camp, fortune favoured not so much the brave as those already fortunate. The grandparents of Chozas in Toledo had owned a restaurant, and he had learnt to cook. He now found himself in a different company, with a Lagerführer who praised his cooking, and a Kommandoführer of the kitchen, known to the Spaniards as ‘el Niño’, who would burn him with cigarettes on the shoulders and arms. Fliess, the Kapo of the kitchen, was a German Red, and he added to the tension by breaking out on occasion with extracts from the Internationale. Chozas remembers the kitchen as the place where morally he suffered most: ‘The pressures came at me from every side. I wanted to steal what I could for my comrades. To help myself in this, I played dumb, pretending that I couldn’t keep accurate accounts. The Germans in the kitchen responded by asking if all Spaniards were illiterate, which provoked me into saying that it was because there were so many illiterates in Spain that we had had a Civil War. The Kapos at Steyr at that time were mainly German Greens or Blacks. They would pass by the kitchen to ask for extra food, dropping the warning: “There are Spaniards in my Kommando. Think what I can do to them.” From the Lagerältester I received the warning: “You are not to give extra food to the Kapos.” Even the new Rapportführer came in to demand more food.’ Again and again in the experience of Chozas, he was struck by the absurdity of his situation, the frequency with which things happened that normally did not happen. One day, the Rapportführer who had befriended him returned to Steyr, yelling ‘Queso! Queso!’ as he entered the camp. Chozas came running, and found the Rapportführer standing beside the brutal Lagerältester, the latter now all smiles and coming forward to embrace and kiss him. To Chozas, the Rapportführer said softly, ‘Don’t worry. The war will soon be over.’ For Steyr it was already over. As a result of the heavy damage inflicted by Allied bombers, the workshops in Steyr were moved in April 1944 to other centres, including Ebensee.35 More than one Nebenlager was made up exclusively of Spaniards. Among such units was the ‘César’ Kommando sent, on 6 June 1941, to build a bridge at Vöcklabruch. This Kommando was part of the Schlier complex, commanded by SSObersturmbannführer Anton Bentele, with a certain Kofler as his Rapportführer.36 The ‘César’ Kommando, comprising 350 Spaniards, took its nickname from its Spanish Lagerältester César Orquín Serra. Orquín, or César as he was known to all, has ever since the Liberation been vilified by the communists, who accuse him of having handed the SS, while he was in the Haupdager, a list of Spanish prisoners who were communist or communist sympathizers. ‘Thanks to the sinister César,’ write Razola and Constante, ‘110 Spaniards were punished and dispatched to

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Gusen.’37 Constante himself contradicts this when he invents a conversation between Ziereis and César in which the commandant shouts back at César: ‘Don’t give me that talk. All you Spaniards are Bolsheviks!’38 Moreover, Constante and Razola were not present when César supposedly betrayed the Spanish communists.39 The probability is that César was a militant anarchist who despised the Stalinists. While the consensus is that he was a hot-tempered and domineering leader who allowed no back-talk in his ranks,40 to his own men he was a hero, and notable among his admirers was Francesc Comellas, a CNT (anarchist) union leader from Barcelona. Comellas was lucky to have survived this long. Wounded in the Spanish Civil War when a bullet went through his right wrist, he was incapacitated for hard labour, which at Mauthausen meant that he was useless and therefore a candidate for an injection of benzene. At the moment of his registration, in December 1940, the prisoner-clerk responsible, who was not Spanish, had entered ‘scabies’ instead of ‘injection’ against his name; whether the error was deliberate or unintentional, it saved his life. Assigned to the quarry, Comellas succeeded in disguising his infirmity for a whole week before he was transferred to less onerous work in the Strassenbau Kommando, and from there, after six months, he joined César in the move to Vöcklabruch. Comellas describes César, who had been a student at the University of Valencia, as a man deeply respected by the other Spaniards for his intellect, for his musical talent—he would play, usually an accordion, whenever an SS would lend him an instrument— and above all for his moral integrity. Highly selfdisciplined, demanding obedience from those under him, but at the same time altruistic and caring about his compatriots’ welfare, he sought, and usually obtained, the best treatment of his men that anyone could expect from the SS. The fact that the majority of the SS in Vöcklabruch were not German but Yugoslav and Romanian, were not of the criminal class, and were far from brutal, helps to explain his success, but those who survived still believe that they owe their very lives to him. It was at Vöcklabruch that Comellas was witness to an unusual incident in KZ life. The Kommando’s Schutzhaftlagerführer was playing idly with a football when the ball struck an electric cable, burst, and the dislodged cable fell on the SS officer’s head. César ran up to the Nazi lying on the ground, and with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation attempted to revive him. Although he did his best, he failed, and the officer died. There were no repercussions.41 With the project at Vöcklabruch completed, the César Kommando, still intact and entirely Spanish, was moved in September 1942 to Ternberg, where it remained for two years. The purpose of the project, commanded by August Süssmeyer, was to construct a dam to supply energy to the Hermann Goering Works in Linz and to other local industrial plants. In the course of the first year the Kommando received an inspection visit by the Reichsmarschall himself. ‘He was wearing a white uniform,’ Comellas recalls, ‘with a touch of yellow and carrying his marshal’s baton. His escort numbered 12 to 15 men, who were armed with revolvers but not machineguns. We were working as he walked among us, so close that we could have struck him with our spades, but none of us dared.’42

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In late 1942, the SS revived a project that was 200 years old: the construction of a tunnel at Loibl-Pass to provide Germany with a strategic route linking Klagenfurt with Ljubljana. The situation at Loibl-Pass, however, was different from that anywhere else: the Kommando was situated in hostile territory, with Tito’s partisans masters of the region, and the project was finally abandoned.43 The Kommando at Schwechat, south-east of Vienna, was engaged in the construction of Heinkel aircraft, and was a natural target for Allied air attacks.44 On 14 July 1944 almost every prisoner in Schwechat was transferred to Floridsdorf, to the north-west of the capital. In the course of an Allied raid on this Kommando on 17 November 1944, two Spaniards, Josep Miret Muste and José Juncosa Escoda, were seriously wounded. Not wanting to be inconvenienced, the local SS commandant ordered his men to fire a bullet into the neck of each. It was precisely the vulnerability of these Kommandos to air attack that induced the Nazi chiefs to order the construction of vast underground factories like those of Gusen II. The decision was actually taken too late for this enormous project to be of any practical use to Germany, but the more the project seemed hopeless, the more the Nazis pursued it with frenzy. The organizational work was entrusted to Bachmayer, who, on 25 September 1943, accompanied the first convoy of prisoners to a site 45 kilometres from Salzburg on the road to Linz.45 Between the villages of Zipf and Redl, six kilometres north of the road, stands the famous Zipfer brewery, which owes its fame to the springs of excellent water located in the hill behind it. What attracted the SS to the brewery were the long tunnels which had already been bored into the hill. The Kommando it now established took its official name of Schlier from the enterprise it was to serve, which required a large expansion of the tunnel system to house the factories. The purpose of the project was to convert liquid oxygen and methanol into fuel to power the Vis and V2s, and to test this fuel in experiments conducted in two huge concrete silos. While no actual launching tests were performed here, the fuel was so inflammable that the bunkers had to be protected against air attack by five metres of concrete, and so great was the danger of explosion that the prisoners who worked there were given copper hammers to avoid producing sparks. The watchtowers and gun emplacements that surrounded the bunkers attest to the importance of the project, and to preserve secrecy the brewery continued to produce a certain amount of beer. Each test was filmed by a crew of German women seated in a protected area behind the silos, but nothing protected them from two explosions (one an accident, and the other sabotage) which each time forced the SS to start again from scratch, causing a delay of months. Meanwhile, the success of Allied bombing raids on the factory at WienerNeustadt, built by a Kommando in 1943 for the production of V2s, precipitated the decision to transfer all such factories underground. Wiener-Neustadt was bombed twice in August of that year and again on 2 November, the third attack demolishing the factory. It was not rebuilt. Three weeks later, Bachmayer again left Mauthausen on a mission, this time to organize, on the southern tip of Lake Traunsee 80 kilometres to the south-west, a new secret Kommando with the code-

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name Zement. It would be hard to find a more exquisite setting for Zement. Nearby lies the village of Ebensee, where the violets and the roses and the green hills are reflected in the still water of the lake. There, at the base of a mountain, and taking its name from the village, a Kommando was set up to provide Siemens AG with an industrial complex which was immune to bombing and which it was hoped could even now turn the tide of war in Hitler’s favour. This time Bachmayer brought with him his trusted Magnus Keller, ‘King Kong’ himself,46 together with 62 other Kapos (among them several Spaniards) and 500 red-triangle prisoners of various nationalities. Their job was to build the Lager, situated at a distance of three kilometres from the projected central tunnel. Since Bachmayer had to return to the Mutterlager, he handed over command, first to two commandants who were replaced for incompetence,47 and finally (from 24 May 1944) to SS-Hauptsturmführer Julius Anton Ganz. Though affected and even effeminate,48 Ganz gave his superiors the fullest satisfaction.49 So too did the Lagerältester ‘King Kong’. Even Ganz treated him with circumspection, and like Ganz he held his post right to the end. With construction of the Lager completed, more than 10 000 prisoners and another 250 Kapos arrived in Ebensee in the first months of 1944 to begin boring into the mountain. Since most came from Mauthausen Mutterlager, they found themselves in some familiar company: ‘King Kong’, with his enormous shoulders and swaggering walk, and now with his own Great Dane presented to him by the grateful SS; and Karl the Kapellmeister, whose sadistic pleasure it still was to drown prisoners with his own hands by plunging their heads into a pail of water or a latrine bucket.50 The camp soon grew into a little town, from fewer than 600 at the start to over 16 000 at the end, the dead being constantly replaced. The prisoners worked in three shifts: 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., 3 p.m. to 11 p.m., and 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. Fourteen tunnels were projected, with several hundred men employed in each. The crews consisted of four categories: those operating the drills, those erecting the scaffolding for the drillers, those clearing the fallen rocks from the tunnel, and those outside the tunnel loading the rocks on to tip trucks. When it snowed or rained, there was an advantage to being employed inside the tunnel: it was impossible to dry a Drillich overnight, the material being of a fibre that did not dry, and such prisoners were forced to put on clothes the following day that were still wet. There were no other advantages. The drilling team consisted of ten prisoners moving forward in a line against the rock, with drills operated by compressed air supplied by generators parked outside the tunnel. When the rock was dry, the dust from the drills formed a white cloud of such density that the drillers could see no more than a yard or two. In the initial stage of boring a tunnel, when the explosives were set all those in the tunnel were evacuated, but once the tunnel had progressed to a depth of some 25 metres the evacuations were regarded as a waste of time and were discontinued. For at least half an hour after every detonation the tunnel was filled with gas as well as dust and the air became virtually unbreathable—but the work continued.

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Everywhere it was a frantic race against time. On 13 July 1944, the Rapportführer Hermann Pribyll entered the Schreibstube to say that every prisoner available in the Lager was to work on the tunnels.51 The scope of the project was immense. In Anlage B alone, the plan called for the excavation of 17 000 square metres by 1 May 1945, and of 32 000 square metres by 20 October 1945.52 By May 1945, of the 14 projected tunnels, ten had been completed, to a length of 428 metres, together with transversals. The entrances were deliberately kept small: two metres wide and two metres high, the plans providing for the installation of a pivoting steel door. To pass through the modest entrance into the interior gave the impression of entering the nave of a cathedral, 20 metres in width and 15 metres in height, and that breathtaking length. Some galleries were in perfect readiness, with machines in place on the lower floor, and dormitories, a refectory, and other services on the upper floor. In one workshop the production of synthetic fuel from charcoal had already begun, and in two tunnels the production of aircraft or V-weapons was about to begin. In another few weeks, the Nazi war industry would have been able to produce such weapons with the assurance that no Allied bomber could ever reach them through a thousand feet of rock. And once the project was complete, the prisoners would never leave the tunnels nor ever again see the light of day, the pivoting steel door sealing them off from the world. They would be the forgotten men in the mountain, the prisoners in the cave. If the Allied invasion of Austria was to rob the Nazis of this dream, the prisoners of Ebensee were nevertheless subject to a mortality rate which was among the highest. The soup was often made from grass, and in February 1944 no bread was distributed to any prisoner for an entire week.53 It was impossible to convey all the corpses to the Mutterlager, so in August 1944 Ebensee received its own crematorium. The post of crematorium Kapo went to Franz Suslak, better known as ‘Franz Krema’, a Green who was brought in from the Mutterlager where he had served in the same capacity. On his arrival at Ebensee, Ganz told him: ‘Here you can let your hair grow, you can dress anyhow you want, you can eat and drink anything you feel like, but you don’t leave this place alive.’ This, as we shall see, was the basic SS plan for all Kapos in such posts. It is only surprising that Ganz warned him in advance. After the liberation of Ebensee, Suslak was found near the barbed wire, a bullet in his head.54 The role of the Spaniards at Ebensee was notable for the number of those who obtained good posts: two were Block Kapos, several were Stubekapos, five were Friseurs, and many more were subordinate Kapos, Stubendiener, and kitchen and store personnel.55 This attests to the success of the Spanish prisoners in obtaining the removal of several Greens and Blacks and in replacing them in their privileged posts. As such, they were observers and surviving witnesses to many a dreadful scene. The majority of prisoners worked on the mountain. We have seen what concern the SS attached to their lives, but there was still the fear of contagion. As a result, the prisoners received regular showers, though with a difference. Four or five prisoners were grouped under a single jet, first hot, then cold, their bodies rubbing, with only occasionally a little piece of soap, and never a towel to dry with. They

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then returned, as always in ranks of five, to the barracks, wet and naked, in temperatures that could fall to −20°C, made even worse when the wind was blowing. A convoy that reached Ebensee on foot in the particularly cold winter of 1944–5 was directed as usual to the showers, the hot being followed by the glacial. But this time the prisoners were forced out into the snow and the icy wind, then returned to the showers, then to the snow and wind. This continued several times throughout the night. Those who fell were beaten until they got up or until they never got up again. By the morning few were still alive.56 Dysentery was a perennial problem, at Ebensee as elsewhere. Prisoners looked for remedies by chewing on turf, charcoal, or fir-tree shoots. But it was a disease that in a KL was impossible to cure. The worst error in its early stages was to stop eating, for no prisoner could afford to miss any calorie at all. Dysentery was often the prelude to other misfortunes. It was impossible for a prisoner to change his soiled clothes, and to smell dirty in the Block was to be subjected to twenty-five lashes from the Kapo. The latrines at Ebensee, as elsewhere, were always the secret meeting place, the only spot where it was safe to meet a prisoner from another Block and exchange information. It was also the exchange market where left-over soup and morsels of bread were traded for cigarettes. At night the latrines were off limits: the curfew went into effect one hour after evening muster, after which it was forbidden for a prisoner to leave his Block unless he was accompanied by a Kapo. At the door of each Block stood a large wooden tub for those who needed it. With 300 to a Block and dysentery rife, the tub was soon filled to overflowing. The next morning the Block Kapo would assign, at random or according to his whim, four men to carry it. Each carried an end of one of the two wooden rods that were placed in the two handles of the tub. Their walk might be of several hundred yards over sometimes difficult ground.57 A distinctive feature of Ebensee was the genial cynicism of making Block 23 a convalescence centre, or Schönungsblock. Here again prisoners were piled five and often six to a straw mattress 80 centimetres wide, virtually unable to move, with the living sometimes wedged for hours between the dead, until the Stubendiener arrived to remove the corpses and make room for others. Three times a day, all prisoners would be turned out of their bunks, producing an indescribable uproar. At most other times the prisoners sank into silence. It was not just that men were thrown together here without any common language. There was no exchange of signs either. Everyone had retreated into himself, thinking of nothing, unable to hear even a death rattle or offer a glance of sympathy, physically and morally spent. The few who survived this could not afterwards remember anything about it, not even the position of the latrine tub. They were living like somnambulists, no longer in the world.58 On 21 April 1944, Streitwieser inaugurated a Nebenlager similar to Ebensee at Melk, 60 kilometres to the east of Mauthausen, as a factory for Steyr-Daimler-Puch. Two weeks later SS-Hauptsturmführer Julius Ludolf, who had served as commandant at Loibl-Pass, took over its command. Up to this time Melk had been

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known chiefly for the beautiful Benedictine abbey where, in 1767, the boy Mozart stopped to play the organ. The abbey was now a school run by monks, who showed neither concern nor curiosity about what was being built next door.59 The population of KL-Melk grew rapidly, to over 10 000. In a single year, up to the moment the Kommando was evacuated to Ebensee on 11 April 1945, the prisoners excavated seven main tunnels, eight metres high, 25 metres wide, linked with transversals, to a total length of 3000 metres. The first machines were installed, but Melk, like Ebensee, had produced nothing by the time it was abandoned.60 We have seen that Mauthausen Mutterlager had a gas chamber in use from autumn 1941 and at full performance from May 1942, and that its capacity (65–70 persons) was negligible in comparison with that of the killing factories of the Vernichtungslager in Poland. Only some 4000 people died in the Mauthausen Gaskammer, most of them towards the end of the war, especially in the final weeks; at that time large numbers of prisoners were being transported from Gusen to the Mutterlager because of the inadequate gassing facilities at Gusen, where a mere 800 would be liquidated, all in the closing months of the war, in barracks crudely converted into gas chambers. The impact of the gas chamber on KZ life, however, is not to be measured in terms of the number of its victims. It should be seen rather in terms of the fear haunting every prisoner that, if he should become too weak or sick to work, the Gaskammer gaped for him.

12 Schloss Hartheim and the mobile gas chamber

To the west of Linz, and in a direct line between Mauthausen and Dachau, stands the forbidding castle of Hartheim, its towers giving it a Byzantine appearance. Built in 1898 as an asylum for the mentally retarded, it was requisitioned by the SS and refitted, with a crematorium chimney that rose to a height of 25 metres but which was concealed from outside view by walls three storeys high.1 At the time Hartheim stood isolated,2 and the approach was forbidden to outsiders. From May 1940 until 1941, the SS used the castle for their euthanasia programme, and gave it the nicknames of Erholungsheim (convalescent home) and Bad Ischl, the therapeutic baths being the gas chamber. Hartheim also contained an electric bone mill.3 A staff of thirty Nazi doctors and assistants, under the direction of SS-Hauptsturmführer Rudolf Lonauer, from Linz, worked there on medical experiments and in the greatest secrecy.4 From 1941 it was used for the liquidation of those crippled by KZ life, especially in Mauthausen and Dachau, and from April 1944 the castle came under the jurisdiction of KL-Mauthausen. Once again, the survival of Juan de Diego allows us to know how the victims were transported from Mauthausen to Hartheim. A shipment consisted of 40 to 50 men, and in certain periods the shipments left with great regularity. The selection was made by Schulz’s Politische Abteilung, which then informed the Lagerschreibstube. Juan de Diego thereupon made out the death certificates even before the men left. At first every case was entered, both in the SS registry and in the card index under the word Hartheim. Then orders were given not to mention Hartheim at all and to discontinue the practice of making out death certificates. Secrecy was now considered even more important than order and precision, which is to say a great deal. The registry and the index cards were now to carry the word Escaped (Entlassen), accompanied by a mark in green crayon, the code for extermination.5 At least 30 000 prisoners died there, including 11 000 from Mauthausen. Of these 449 were Spaniards, 12 of them murdered in a single day (12 August 1941).6 Schloss Hartheim was unique in that not a single prisoner who entered it came out alive. Before the end of 1944 the SS took the very early precaution of dismantling this chamber of horrors, and on 13 December 20 prisoners arrived from Mauthausen to transform it not merely back into a château, but into a château charitably converted into a school. To this end, in January 1945, after first taking care to murder the prisoners brought in to work on the

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reconstruction,7 the SS brought in 35 German children, six nurses, and a teacher. Such was the happy house of Hartheim when the Allied forces reached it.8 One other method of liquidation remains to be recounted: the killing in the trucks. The mobile gas chamber, code-named Phantom, and better known as ‘Black Raven’, was the invention of SS-Obersturmbannführer Walter Rauff.9 The operation was quite simple: after the prisoners were loaded into the back of the truck, the driver and two other SS mounted the cabin, which was sealed off, and on the journey to Hartheim or elsewhere, the driver released the carbon monoxide from the exhaust into a pipe running directly into the back. In the case of Mauthausen, the garage Kommando (under its Fahrdienstleiter Willy Steinmann) was ordered to convert one or more vehicles into what looked like any standard blue Austrian postoffice truck, with no windows.10 This windowless truck, known to the SS as the ‘grüne Minna’, could fit 40 prisoners. The Polish prisoner Frantisek Poprawka attested that it was his task, as Zentralschreiber of the Sonderrevier,11 to select 30 or more prisoners who were among the most sick and to assemble them in the area between Block 11 and Block 16, where the truck would be waiting. The driver of the truck was, on most occasions, none other than Franz Ziereis. The prisoners were loaded inside, the doors were bolted, and the truck left. Prisoners in the garage Kommando, by measuring the consumption of the vehicle’s fuel, estimated that it travelled a distance of 30 kilometres—the distance to Hartheim. A certain A.Tiefenbacher, whose work consisted of carrying the corpses to the crematorium, deduced that the prisoners who were loaded on in Mauthausen were gassed on the way to Gusen and incinerated in Gusen, while those loaded in Gusen were gassed on the way to Mauthausen and incinerated in Mauthausen.12 At certain times, however, the vehicles left Mauthausen with live prisoners and came back with the same prisoners dead; it was so recorded in the camp records by Juan de Diego, using always the same green crayon.13 Josef Klat, working in the garbage collection Kommando, twice witnessed prisoners being loaded into the truck bound for Gusen; on their return, his Kommando transported the bodies to the crematorium.14 Ziereis himself admitted on his death-bed that the vehicles served as a shuttle between Mauthausen and Gusen in the period from mid-1942 to mid-1943. Proprawka estimates the number of trips at 20 or more, and believes that the operation ended because the secret became known. It should not be forgotten that Himmler’s order of 6 January 1943 required from that date onward that a doctor, in this particular operation, be seated alongside the driver. The total number of prisoners who died in this way is estimated at 1500. Among them were a considerable number of Spaniards, including the air force major Román Busquets Gelabert, who had commanded the airfield in Barcelona during the Civil War, and Emilio Andrés, who had served as commissar of an army corps in the Spanish Republican Army. Another Spaniard, Lieutenant-Colonel León Luengo Muñoz, died in the same way in Dachau.15 If more prisoners were not liquidated in the trucks, it was because the system was slow and cumbersome.16 And as the war progressed, and victory receded, the pace of killing quickened.

13 Escape and the SS response

The hope that springs eternal explains why one or two prisoners, against all odds, attempted to escape. It was hard enough to break out, but to survive in the alien countryside, amid a hostile people, was harder still. Even among the Spaniards, who in this as in other things were always alert to opportunity, only ten succeeded in escaping from Mauthausen, six in 1941 and four in 1942.1 All those who escaped were relentlessly pursued. The SS called the pursuit the Hasenjagd, or hare-hunt, betraying their relish for the sport. Those who were recaptured were whipped or hanged or, more commonly, both. Since an escape and the subsequent recapture was hardly an everyday affair—in five years at Mauthausen there were only two public hangings2— the SS turned the event into a spectacle, prepared down to the smallest detail. Orchestral accompaniment played an important role in the production. The music would vary across the KZ archipelago according to the tastes of the particular Lagerführer, but there were some standard favourites: Johann Strauss waltzes, an old German ballad, ‘Alle Vöglein sind schon da’, and the contemporary French song made famous by Rina Ketty, ‘Je vous attendrai’.3 Goethe once said that you can tell any man’s character by what he laughs at. The SS found hilarity in what was a whole litany of lampoons —of diabolical invention. National Socialism was, as much as anything, a revolution against German culture, against outdated people like Goethe: Germany was no longer to be known throughout the world for its poets and its philosophers, but instead for its real heroes, its men of action, real men who could laugh at real jokes. The first of the two public hangings at Mauthausen took place one evening in June 1941 and has been recorded in detail, but similar executions occurred throughout the KZ universe, and the scene was to be repeated at Mauthausen in most of its details in July 1942. Ziereis did not wait for Himmler’s order, that went out on 6 January 1943, requiring that every execution within the camps be attended by the Lagerführer or his delegate and by the camp’s chief medical officer;4 Ziereis could be relied upon to attend in person. It has been pointed out that a German law existed for the protection of animals, making it a crime to allow animals to watch while other animals were being slaughtered,5 but no similar law existed to protect human beings. The entire prisoner population, Kapos and Prominenten included, was ordered to attend. Survivors who can speak evenly of other experiences refer to the public hangings as not frequent but truly terrifying. On this first occasion, three

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German prisoners had escaped only to be recaptured within a day. They had to reenter the camp, as usual, on their knees. As the local Kommandos returned to the fortress that day, they found three gallows mounted in the middle of the Appellplatz. The prisoners paraded as usual by Block, in mathematical neatness, for the roll-call: all odd-numbered Blocks on the right of the square as seen from the main gates of the fortress, and all even-numbered Blocks on the left. After the rollcall, the prisoners in their ten ranks, the shortest in the front, the tallest in the back, were formed into three sides of a square. The fourth was set aside for the SS, and the gypsy orchestra. This Zigeunerkapelle provided not so much a musical rendition as a charivari, the SS clearly finding this more suitable for an evening of fun. A wait, and then the main gates opened. The gypsy orchestra, led by Karl, came in playing a lively march.6 Behind the orchestra came a tumbrel, drawn by two prisoners. Standing on the platform, bare-chested, were the three German prisoners. They bore the marks of the tortures they had undergone. The tumbrel, normally the cart used to carry the corpses to the crematorium, was adorned with brightly coloured ribbons and a placard on each side: ‘Warum in die Ferne schweifen, wenn das Gute doch so nah’ist?’ (‘Why stray so far from home, when things are so good so close?’),7 and ‘Hurra, wir sind schon wieder da!’ (‘Hurrah! We’re back home again!’). All the while the Kapo who led it, dressed as for a carnival, strutted like a buffoon, one hand on his left hip, the other beating time with his baton. Everything had the appearance of a circus. For one hour the procession worked its way along the rows of prisoners, until it stopped in front of the gallows. More than 10 000 men, of whom several hundred remain alive in 1999, were witnesses to the scene, as the condemned men were strapped to a wooden horse. Each received 25 strokes. They then mounted the platform. The second to die placed the noose around the first, then knocked away the stool supporting him. The third then did the same to the second, and the Lagerältester then did the same to the third. The orchestra was still playing. The entire parade then had to march around the gallows, one by one, with each man raising his eyes to the corpses. The SS watched intently, and if any man dipped his eyes he was made to go around again, this time under the whip.8 It was in the nature of things that some of Mauthausen’s Nebenlager, especially the smaller ones, offered possibilities for escape that the Mutterlager denied, and while the SS never left anything to chance, it was unable to prevent such escapes entirely.9 Among these, none was better remembered, by the SS or by the prisoners, than the escape of five Spaniards from the subsidiary camp at Bretstein in the mountains south of Trieben, where 50 prisoners, all Spaniards except for one German who served as Kapo, had been sent in June 1941 to prepare the camp for the convoys that would follow. They were, therefore, employed in building the perimeter of the camp and the Blocks that would house those to come, the purpose of the camp being to construct, in this desolate zone in which not a soul was living, a mountain road that would connect two villages. The Block in which the group of 50 slept was within sound of a mountain stream, and to five of them it seemed to beckon with the promise that it flowed to freedom. A river, even a little one like this four metres wide, offered the chance, the only chance, to elude the SS dogs. The group of five resolved to

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escape and make for Switzerland, whose closest point was 300 kilometres to the west as the crow flies, which is not how the fugitive travels. Every evening they met to plan it, while giving no hint of their intention to any of the others. Two were socialists, one a communist, and one an anarchist; two, Primitivo Izquierdo and Manuel Cerejo, were from Andalusia, the third, Alfonso López, from Galicia, and the fourth, Antonio Velasco, from Alberca in Murcia. (The fifth man, Vicente García Ramos, who was recaptured three days after the break-out and registered as dead by the SS, has been forgotten by the survivors.)10 Velasco, being employed as Friseur, was able to acquire a razor and sufficient soap, these being indispensable tools of survival if the prisoners were to blend into the populace. He also managed to obtain a knapsack for each of the four, and a single knife. That was all. They had no map, no compass, no torch, and as for proficiency in German, the four of them together had only a few words, badly pronounced. In their favour, at least for the break-out, was the fact that the wire fence had not yet been electrified and that there was only a single watchtower erected. On 4 August 1941, in the very middle of the short summer night, the group of five assembled as agreed at the foot of the window from which they planned their escape. To the dismay of all, their courage failed: none was prepared to be the first to jump. They decided to wait until the following night. By the next night they were mentally ready. They made the jump, pulled the wire apart, sped into the river, and followed it for miles, leaving it only when they were certain that the SS dogs could no longer pick up their scent. They had already agreed that Izquierdo should serve as their leader: as an officer in the Spanish Republican Army, the others recognized him as the best educated and the most experienced. Food at least was no problem: the farms and orchards offered (without the owners being asked) chickens, eggs, vegetables and fruit galore, and the prisoners ate too much of everything, but fortunately without dire consequences. The consequences were reserved instead for the 46 Spanish prisoners back in the Aussenlager. Felipe Yébenes Romo, another barber who was to play an important role later in the Mutterlager as a barber to the SS, awoke to find his comrades gone and with them his own hope of escape, and now foresaw only too well the reaction of the SS. A species that was at the best of times mentally unstable acted in times like these in a form deranged. Their pride was wounded. Their fury landed first on the Blockältester, but all 46 prisoners were driven out of the Block and kept standing at attention, their shaven heads exposed to a merciless sun. There they would remain, they were told, until the fugitives were brought back in. By noon, they began to drop. The afternoon arrived, and the best efforts of the SS had failed. The prisoners were now forced into gymnastic exercises that could end only in total exhaustion. They were made to run to a local quarry, and then run back, carrying a rock. Still the SS had not recaptured any one of the five fugitives, so they began their interrogations of the 46, who were each asked what they had seen and heard in the night. The Blockältester and four others, including Yébenes, were hanged by their arms in front of their companions in the paralysing Pfahlbinden position. They remained there for at least an hour, and when they were brought down all five were

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still alive. Since the SS commandant had still not obtained the information he wanted, he promised the five that they would be hanged again. At that, the Blockältester, with his last strength, made for the window and ran to the wire, hoping for nothing more than the machine-gun fire which would put an end to his sufferings. Instead, he reached the river, but the SS guards caught up with him and dragged him out, their leader shouting ‘You want the river? You’ll get the river!’ They held his head under the water until he died. The remaining four were hanged a second time, for 30 minutes, during which a young prisoner from Valencia finally succumbed. For one whole week, with no positive news reported from the manhunt, the 44 prisoners in the camp who were still alive were subjected to this treatment. In the course of the week, a second convoy of Spaniards, this one of 150 men, arrived at Bretstein and could witness the sufferings of the 44. At the end of the week, in the middle of the night, Bachmayer arrived from the Hauptlager to inspect them and order their return to Mauthausen. There they were all ordered into the Strafkompanie working in the quarry, wearing on their Drillich the black spot in a white circle ringed in red, the dreaded designation of the recaptured fugitive. No matter that they had not escaped, or tried to escape. The life expectancy of those in this category was between two and three weeks, but Yébenes survived, thanks only to the help he received—sometimes a piece of bread, sometimes a portion of margarine or sausage—from the Spanish network. Meanwhile, the fugitives, now reduced to four, had helped themselves to Austrian clothes, but they still moved only by night, sometimes through villages and towns which were totally blacked out, which gave them the feeling that they moved unseen. Their morale, however, began to sag. They were not even sure that they were moving in a westerly direction, and in fact they wasted days before they found their correct bearings. If on some occasions they had stuffed themselves with chicken, on other days they found nothing at all to eat. The fact that they had no money, or information, or knowledge of the language led López to be the first to look upon their attempt at escape as surrealist cinema. For a whole month they wandered over the mountains until their strength began to fail. At this point their leader Izquierdo, who had been a railway worker in Spain before the Civil War, suggested that the four board a goods train which would take them to the Swiss frontier in two days. The other three thought that Izquierdo had gone mad, but he persisted, so they agreed to separate. It was an emotional parting. The other three continued their trek. On 4 September 1941—it was Velasco’s 22nd birthday—they believed that they were within 12 kilometres of the Swiss frontier. They proceeded on until one day, in open country, they spotted in the distance a man approaching in their direction. The Spaniards had not thought out any defensive strategy. They could have bolted, but they thought it best to remain as calm as they could and to continue their march. As they approached the man, they saw he was in the uniform of a forester. He at once questioned them, and when they replied in their atrocious German he understood in a flash, though he took them to be French prisoners of war. He ordered the Spaniards to accompany him to the local village. López and Cerejo walked in front, with Velasco and the forester

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behind. The two leading Spaniards gradually increased the pace, and then broke into a run. Convinced that a bird in hand was worth three in the bush, the forester decided to hold on to Velasco, who chose that moment to drive his fist into the forester’s face. But the blow lacked strength. The forester drew a knife from his belt and stabbed Velasco in the chest, shoulder and hand. Velasco still managed to break away, but got no farther than 50 metres before he collapsed. He was carried into the village, where he was denied water, which was all he asked for, while a dozen stout villagers at once armed themselves with farm utensils and went out in search of López and Cerejo. These two were recaptured the next day, and all three were quickly identified as prisoners from Mauthausen. They had succeeded in remaining at liberty for over a month, but had progressed no farther than 150 kilometres. All three were returned to the Mutterlager. Strangely enough, all three were spared the standard punishment. López and Cerejo were hanged by their feet and whipped before being assigned to the Strafkompanie, wearing the emblem of doom on their tunics. In the case of Velasco, he remained for three weeks in the hospital near where the three had been arrested, until the Gestapo called to collect him and take him back to Bretstein. There the commandant could not hide his amazement that any prisoner could have avoided capture for so long a time, or even for a day, and sought every piece of evidence of the route they had taken and the means they had found to stay alive. On the first question, Velasco had virtually no information to offer; they had headed west. On the second he gave the simple answer that so much food was lying on the ground in the Tyrolean orchards that they had no need to steal. On his return to Mauthausen his own ordeal began. Fifty-five years later, he still vividly recalls what happened to him that day in Block 2: the indescribable despair that the victim feels as his feet and wrists are tied to the trestle, the sensation after the first 25 lashes that his entire body has been transformed into a singed and swollen lump, the sight of his testicles inflated and blackened, the horrifying wait for the following Saturday and the second session, and then for the third, followed by another week of terror that this following Saturday might bring a fourth, and with it his death. But there was not a fourth, and Velasco was not hanged. He, López and Cerejo thus became the only three recaptured prisoners ever to have been spared from hanging. Instead, Velasco was sent, like the other two, to the Strafkompanie. Despite dreadful sufferings, all three survived, again because other Spaniards succeeded in sending them extra spoonfuls of food, and also because, in the case of Velasco, he received kindness and help from the Blockältester in his Block 13, the German Otto whom the Spaniards knew as ‘Matamoros’. Once Velasco was able to obtain a transfer to the Baukommando, he dared the dreadful risk of unsewing the emblem from the back of his Drillich, taking the utmost care to leave no visible trace. As for their comrade Izquierdo, who had separated from them during their escape, he never reached Switzerland. Though stopped and arrested, and interrogated by the Gestapo, he never revealed the name of Mauthausen. He was sent instead to Dachau, and he too survived.11

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A similar attempt was made on 5 April 1942 by three Spaniards in the Nebenlager at Vöcklabruch. They reached the Tyrol, where one was shot by an Austrian huntsman and the other two were recaptured and brought back to the Nebenlager. Both survived, and one tried again, this time successfully, to reach freedom, crossing the Yugoslav frontier and joining Tito’s partisans.12 A further attempt was made on 18 June 1942, again by three Spaniards, from the Nebenlager at Steyr. All three were immediately killed.13 There is little doubt that the escape of the four Spaniards from Bretstein, and the other similarly unsuccessful attempts, infuriated the SS, who were more determined than ever to show that no escape was possible. Despite all their precautions, in June 1942 the Austrian Green Hans Bonarewitz14 became the most celebrated fugitive of all, precisely because some of the photographs which the SS took were among those that the Spaniards were able to save. Employed in the SS garage Kommando under Oberscharführer Willy Steinmann, Bonarewitz managed to construct a false bottom to a crate containing a motor, then hid in it as the SS loaded the crate on to a truck bound for Steyr. His escape created an understandable sensation. Bachmayer ordered the garage Kapo to receive 25 lashes, administered by one of the strongest of the SS. Raimundo Súñer, one of the Spaniards also employed in the garage, and at the same time Stubendienst in Block 2, did his best for his Kapo, giving him hot and cold baths, but he was now living his own nightmare. He had the impression that Bonarewitz did not like him; if he were recaptured and if he implicated him in his escape, Súñer would not only receive 25 lashes but also lose his job in the garage and his post as Stubendienst, with the prospect of returning to the Steps.15 Meanwhile, and for the next three weeks, Bonarewitz remained on the run, until he found himself turned in on 11 July by the local inhabitants. Looking for a punishment to fit the crime, Ziereis had him buried in his box, but he took care to exhume him before he suffocated, for nothing was to mar the festivity he had planned. On the evening of 29 July the prisoners paraded as usual on the Appellplatz. The roll-call was taken, but the prisoners were not dismissed. Again a wait. Again the main gates opened, and the gypsy orchestra, still led by Karl, came in playing an adagio. Again, two prisoners (one of whom was none other than Streitwolf) dragged the tumbrel, now carrying the wretched Bonarewitz, who struggled to keep his balance. Again the procession passed between the long rows of prisoners drawn up in formation on both sides. The orchestra now attacked a livelier piece, and all the while its drum major, in his white kepi, kept time with his baton, held in hands that had many times choked the life out of his victims in the latrines. Again, for a full hour, the procession worked its way along the rows of spectators before it stopped in the centre. Bonarewitz was ordered to dismount. The SS surrounded him, and after punching and kicking him, tied him to the wooden horse and administered the statutory 25 lashes. He was then chained to the Klagemauer, beside his crate. So ended the first day. On 30 July, all the prisoners paraded again before a scaffold erected for the occasion. Ziereis arrived, accompanied by ‘King Kong’. Bonarewitz was brought back on to the parade ground. What made this day memorable in history is that

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among the many photographs taken by Ricken of this event, three or four are among those that Antonio García saved. If these do not show the hanging, they show the victim on his tumbrel, preceded by the Zigeunerkapelle, with its musicians identifiable, and no less so the attendant SS that stand and mock. In another of the photos, the tumbrel is shown passing between the two ranks. Juan de Diego is seen standing in the front row on the left, with Yébenes Romo on his right; Antonio García, being among the tallest, was as usual in the back row. Diego is caught glancing to his right at Ricken’s camera while all the prisoners are under orders to turn their eyes on Bonarewitz as the tumbrel approached the scaffold. The final scene, perhaps inevitably, is described by surviving witnesses in details that conflict, but the general lines are not in dispute. Hans mounted a small table and the Lagerältester attached the noose, at which point Hans cried out, ‘Kamaraden!’ ‘Halt’s Maul!’ screamed Ziereis, striking him savagely in the face with his whip. Hans said nothing more. ‘King Kong’ climbed down and kicked away the support. The body dangled, shook; the rope snapped. The scene was repeated, and again the rope snapped. Only on the third try was Bonarewitz dead. For two or three minutes more, his body continued to twitch from nervous reaction. For two hours more, the parade remained standing in front of the corpse, which swung in the wind. Then the prisoners, all 10 000 of them, were ordered to walk around it, one at a time, and look it in the face, while the band played the ‘Beer Barrel Polka’.16 The ceremony ended.17 The temptation to escape, the SS wished to suggest, should be resisted whenever possible.

Part III Survival

Los hermanos son unidos Porque esa es la ley primera; Tengan unióZn verdadera En cualquier tiempo que sea, Porque si entre ellos pelean Los devoran los de afuera.* Martín Fierro

1 The nucleus of a resistance

We have said that the principal credit for giving an organized form to the resistance at Mauthausen goes to the Spaniards. It is important not to repeat the exaggerations of authors such as Razola and Constante, who would claim more for the resistance than was the case. Manuel García, ex-custodian of the Mauthausen museum, after considering the matter for 50 years, says outright, without anyone bringing the matter up: ‘Resistencia, nada! Armas, nada!’ (‘Nothing, that is to say, up to the last moment. The rest is farce.’)1 Indeed, for most of the time, resistance was merely an organized attempt to maintain morale and save its members whenever possible. But even that much, in the context of Mauthausen, was a major achievement. A nonSpanish eyewitness, Michel de Boüard, has said of the Spanish ‘collective’ that it alone, up until 1943, had the character of a solid organization in which communists joined with anarchists, socialists, and republicans.2 Just as the Spaniards were in the forefront of the first stage of the resistance (the moral struggle), so were they in the vanguard of the second, constructing what became known as the secret organization. Here the credit must go precisely to the Spanish communists, assisted by other communists. Communist and noncommunist sources alike attest to the fact that, up to the beginning of 1944, there were very few organizations at all, in Mauthausen proper, that were not created by the communists. Even the iron discipline of the communists, who prided themselves on their ability to organize resistance however unfavourable the circumstances, was ineffectual at first in a situation such as this. The first Resistance committee was said to be formed by the Spanish communists on 21 June 1941,3 when an order for a general disinfection of the camp provided an opportunity for them to meet. The leading figure to emerge was Manuel Razola Romo, a peasant from Guadalajara province who had served in the French labour companies, participated in the retreat from the Maginot line to Belfort, crossed into Switzerland, returned to France, landed in German hands on 21 June 1940, and arrived at Mauthausen on 26 April 1941. Razola himself attests to (and takes pride in) the fact that the committee was a political directorate limited to the PCE and PSUC.4 The committee defined as its first objective, essential to the Spanish group’s survival, the removal of the Greens and Blacks from the subaltern positions and their replacement by the Blues and Reds; it was understood that this would require tenacity and patience. The

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Greens were still in control of the administration even at the end of 1942, and the systematic identification and liquidation of the communist leaders by the SS explains the continued weakness of the organization, as Artur London admits.5 The resistance organization faced almost insuperable difficulties. Most prisoners spent whatever free time they had in seeking food and rest; few were attracted to the idea of resisting.6 There was still no attempt to organize anything on the international level. Apart from the differences of language and culture, there were the dangers of betrayal by blabbermouths, by the fainthearted, and by outright traitors. Not all prisoners were antifascist. The Greens, most of them Germans or Poles, included some who, in the opinion of the Spanish communists Razola and Constante, were worse Nazis than the SS—an absurd remark, of course, for even the worst Greens were merely cold-blooded gangsters. Others had been arrested for blackmarketeering, or for no other reason than that they were netted in a police raid. Few of them had much stomach for the fight.7 The Spaniards persevered. Meetings of their committee were held in the latrine of Block 3, the latrines being the usual venue of all committee meetings at Mauthausen.8 Since nothing in the camp was given away, and since the cigarette was the unit of currency, priority was given to stealing cigarettes, not for personal use, but as the means to buy privileges, and especially food.9 Already in 1941 the Spaniards were entering the service Kommandos. While not all were qualified at first for the jobs they obtained, the Spaniards in general represented a vast pool of skilled labour10 to which the SS turned more and more for help. They worked as masons, painters, carpenters, tailors, blacksmiths, electricians, and shoemakers; in the linen store and in the disinfection squad; in the quarry where many Spaniards were professional stone-cutters or pneumatic drillers; and in the kitchens where a large number of them were cooks.11 Ester Borrás and Razola, for example, worked in the disinfection squad,12 Luis Gil as a servant to the Lagerältester, Marcelo Rodríguez as a clockmaker, and Manuel Azaustre as a barber in Block 13 and cleaner in the office of Ziereis.13 Carlos Cabeza was put in charge of the commandant’s miniature pig farm, situated on the other side of the wall in line with Block 5.14 A Spaniard called Tomás Tomás Tomás had first to overcome the handicap of his name (‘Are you trying to joke with me?’ roared an incredulous SS) before he was selected to work in the SS vegetable garden, on the terrace overlooking the SS football field and the Sanitätslager; since he was a professional gardener, he became the Kommando’s Kapo.15 A certain Espí, from Valencia, was in charge of the boilers in the Effektenkammer, where the Spanish network was now so finely woven that it was possible for a Spanish prisoner to recover in the showers something that he had lost moments earlier in that dreadful line where he had been stripped like a chicken.16 Many of those selected went through a terrifying suspense. Among them was Manuel García, from Madrid, the future custodian of the Mauthausen museum. In May 1941 he had been working in the quarry for six weeks when, at roll-call on the Appellplatz, he heard his number called. He did not know what to think. Another prisoner whose number was also called told him it could only be for an infraction, and the statutory 25 lashes. Instead, for García it was his assignment to the Baubüro,

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the office of the construction Kommando. He did not know German, but he had been selected because he had studied civil engineering, and particularly road construction, at the polytechnic level. His work at the Baubüro was thus to draw designs. His Kapo was a German Green of Czech origin, named Mariam. At the end of his very first day in the office he came to know something about the temperament of his Kommandoführer. García had produced his first design, and it was lying on the desk in the office as the Kommandoführer entered. He examined the design, then with a violent sweep ripped it from the table. García’s heart sank. He felt certain he had failed and would be returned to the quarry. Instead of that, the Kommandoführer thrust the design in the face of the Kapo, shouting, ‘Now that’s what I call good work!’ García remained in his job, though transferred in 1943 to the Baubüro in Gusen. He would often return to the Mutterlager to deposit or collect designs, travelling on foot, with perhaps one or two other prisoners, accompanied by a single SS guard.17 The majority of these privileged prisoners were thus working outside the fortress. This was true also for the eight barbers assigned to the SS, who placed their shop (Friseurstube) on the parapet overlooking the garage, at the opposite end to Ziereis’ office. Seven of the eight were Spaniards, to be known inevitably as the barbers of Seville. The eighth was a German Red, a professional barber, who, being German, was automatically appointed Kapo. His name was Gustav, and since he had fought in the International Brigades in Spain he spoke Spanish. It was he who selected the Spaniards. Among them were Manuel Carmona, Felipe Yébenes Romo, and Josep Llombard. When Gustav, as a German, was forced to enrol in the Wehrmacht on the Eastern front, Carmona assumed his duties, which included cutting the hair of Ziereis. Carmona was quite capable of cutting his throat too, but he knew what the consequences would be for the entire Spanish contingent. Yébenes also cut Ziereis’ hair, and at least on one occasion styled the hair of the commandant’s wife Ida, but it was Llombard who was the specialist in this domain and he catered to several of the SS wives. This gave rise to one more surrealist setting. So admired was Llombard as a coiffeur that every week he was driven to Linz by an SS guard to style the hair of the city’s grandes dames. On other occasions, Ida Ziereis, or another SS wife, might be caught unprepared for an SS soirée or other event and find herself in urgent need of his services. Llombard would leave the camp, even at 10 p.m. and without an escort, to report to the villa in question. His work habitually won the admiration not only of the wife but of her SS husband, and the wife would reward him with fried eggs or such, all in front of her husband. Llombard would then make his way back to the camp. What were his thoughts as he walked the road, other than escape—and the futility of it? Where would he escape to? Home was KLMauthausen. He did not speak German, he did not know the country, and the certain outcome would be torture and death. Why give up what he had? Better to pray that it would last.18 A prisoner from Aragon called Manuel (‘El Maño’) was probably the first Spaniard to obtain a post as Kapo, in the Baukommando constructing the rampart; he then succeeded in placing other Blues as Kapos.19 Manolo Alamán, from Madrid,

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became Kapo of the tailor’s shop Kommando.20 Another Spaniard called Cheka became a Kapo in the kitchens.21 This allowed the Catalan Joan Tarragó, leader of the PSUC group in Mauthausen, to find a job there too. He was a cobbler by trade, but he had once worked in a hotel, so on that basis the Spanish network turned him into a cook.22 As for Mariano Constante, he had the singular experience of serving as orderly to SS-Oberscharführer Willy Weber, who was chief clerk to Ziereis himself.23 Orderlies were responsible for cleaning the latrines of the SS and handling their dirty laundry, which explains why the SS referred to them as Klosettreiniger.24 Prisoners selected for such work could only count their blessings.

2 A Spaniard enters the Central Administration Office

Few events were more important to the Spaniards than the promotion of Juan de Diego to the Lagerschreibstube. De Diego, as we have seen, had arrived in Mauthausen on 6 August 1940 with the very first contingent of Spaniards; he received the number 3156.1 A Catalan from Barcelona and member of the moderate leftist Ezquerra, he had served in the Civil War, on the Aragon front and later in Madrid, as secretary to Colonel Joaquín Blanco Valdés; he had then been transferred to the 26th (‘Durruti’) Division, where his responsibility had been to teach administrative skills to the anarchists. From his arrival in Mauthausen until March 1941, he worked, like everyone else, in the quarry. His transfer to the Lagerschreibstube resulted from several chance factors. In 1940 Bachmayer had chosen as his Lagerschreiber I the Austrian Green Josef Leitzinger. Leitzinger thus began work in Block 1 under the Rapportführer Dostoevski, and at once took advantage of his privileges. His barber was forced to approach him from the main gate to the Schreibstube on all fours, and even on his belly.2 Since he was also free to bestow favours, he chose to employ Mario Arnijas, a Spanish amateur tenor whose voice Leitzinger liked to hear around the office. Arnijas was thus hired to amuse. He was saved from the work that killed, but he was fed no better than before, and he subsequently arranged his transfer to a service Kommando, where he ate more and ultimately survived the war.3 When Arnijas left the Schreibstube, in February 1941, he proposed that his friend Juan de Diego take his place. The latter presented himself to Leitzinger: he did not sing, but he did speak German, having learnt it from exchanges with German prisoners and by listening carefully to the SS; he would carry up a rock while conjugating the verb haben, reciting it like a prayer, which in fact it was. The office already had a Lagerschreiber II, the German Green Karl Weber,4 who was responsible mainly for the composition of the work Kommandos, but the SS were by then very conscious of the fact that they had made a great number of errors in recording Spanish names. The Germans were also intrigued by the ‘de’ in his name and assumed that it was the equivalent of ‘von’. In his first meeting with Leitzinger, de Diego discovered for himself that he would be working under a perfect brute: ‘He spoke to me of course in German, and I replied as best I could. Then I made the mistake of putting my hand on the table. He beat me for it, and then said that a beating was the proper introduction to employment in the Schreibstube.’5 De Diego thus

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took up the duties, officially from 1 March 1941, of the new post of Lagerschreiber III, who was also made responsible for the Todesmeldung, or Register of Deaths. When, in June 1943, Weber was transferred to a Nebenlager,6 he was replaced by a Czech graduate in commerce and engineering, Kuneš Pany. Though not a communist, Pany was an anti-Nazi of merit who deserved his red triangle. In the aftermath of the assassination of Heydrich, his survival was miraculous, the more so since Bachmayer was known for a special hatred of the Czechs,7 but we must assume that the SS needed someone of his linguistic talent. While any open opposition was too dangerous, a Red and a Blue now vied with a Green in the influence they could exert in the appointment of the Kapos. Even before the removal of Leitzinger, the new balance gave the resistance a vital impetus. It was now a matter, through international co-operation, of driving the Greens from all the administrative posts they had monopolized until now. Now that Juan de Diego worked in the Lagerschreibstube, he could see at first hand the way the camp functioned. The orderly room was the responsibility of SSHauptscharführer Johann (Hans) Haider, who as 1st Schutzhaftlagerschreiber, answered to Schulz. Haider’s own office was with the rest outside the fortress, while the orderly room was situated in Block 1, the first building to the left on entering the fortress through the main gates. Like every Block, it was divided into two parts, A and B. Stube A contained the brothel and Bachmayer’s dog kennels; Stube B, the orderly room, and at the end the saddleries (responsible for the cords and whips) and the cobbler’s shop. The Lagerschreibstube was therefore square in shape, with six windows, three opposite three. No pictures relieved the walls. As one entered the office, three desks stood in a line to the right, the three clerks sitting in order, their backs to the windows, with Schreiber I responsible for the Blocks, Schreiber II for the work Kommandos, and Schreiber III for Deaths. Juan de Diego thus sat farthest from the door. Opposite the Lagerschreiber I was the occasional desk shared between Climent (on his visits from the Politische Abteilung) and Georg Streitwolf, the German Green responsible for delivering and collecting the mail (Arbeitskommando Poststelle); Streitwolf, as we have seen, was also conductor of the camp orchestra and anything but the criminal type. Between the occasional desk and the chief clerk, against the wall, stood the SS library. Opposite the Lagerschreiber II was the massive card index, and opposite de Diego sat the Buchbinder, a German Green named Emil Rau, who bound the books for the library. Between de Diego and Rau, above their heads, ran a wooden beam no different from any other except in the horrors this particular one inspired. In the centre stood a charcoal-burning stove, and at the side of the card-index a small cupboard contain ing plates and other utensils for the four Prominenten; these ate in the office, but slept with the other Prominenten in the adjacent building, Block 2. While the life of a Lagerschreiber was bliss compared with that of the standard prisoner, these clerks went through their own ordeal. The workday was long: all the Lagerschreiber began at 5 a.m. and worked until late evening, and when a new consignment of prisoners arrived the clerks had to work non-stop for 24 or 30 hours

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in making out an index card for each. Worse experiences than that, however, awaited Juan de Diego as he began his life as a Prominenter. No one entered the Lagerschreibstube, not even the SS, unless he was specifically authorized to do so. ‘The SS would stand outside the door like little boys,’ recalls de Diego. If ever an SS man was allowed in, he was never allowed to touch the records, which were sacrosanct. The office was at the same time a venue for each day’s banal barbarities. A prisoner would be ordered to report there for an infringement of the regulations, and he would stand at attention outside the office until the Rapportführer, or Bachmayer, or Ziereis himself arrived. Sometimes the summons would be due not to an infringement but to some reason out of the black pit of their minds, or for no other reason than that it was something to do. At such times, the SS closed the Schreibstube’s curtains. Sometimes the glowing stove would serve them in the same way it served Schulz in the Politische Abteilung, the victim being forced to place his hands on it or sit. More usually, the SS officers would order the prisoner’s wrists to be bound behind his back; his body was then hoisted on to the beam. Occasionally the feet would be tied to the wrists. This was the practice that the SS called the Pfahlbinden, and it invoked a numbing fear in every prisoner. The rumour ran that the worst agony came at the beginning, while the shoulders were in the process of dislocation. It was therefore recommended that the victim shake his body at the moment he was suspended in order to assist in the dislocation.8 Poor wretches that they were to be thus reduced to this subhuman level of reasoning. The body was nevertheless left dangling in this position for up to an hour or even longer, while Juan de Diego, seated so close that he could have reached out and touched the victim, had no choice but to continue his clerical work at the table. For the senior Lagerschreiber, the situation could be even worse, since it was part of his duty to sit at the feet of the prisoner hanging from the beam and take notes, whenever information was wanted, of what the prisoner was crying out. Here in capsule was the essence of KZ life: a large part of the programmed degradation of the prisoners was to let them sit there, observers of the scene, powerless to intervene or express the slightest hint of humanity or compassion. After ten minutes or so, the pain was so intense that the victim invariably passed out. When he was eventually let down, the SS had not finished their sport. The prisoner had to find his own way out of the office, by opening the door. If he failed he could expect a further round of punishment, perhaps the stove. But opening the door meant turning the large enamel knob, and the prisoner was virtually unable to move his arms at all. It was here that de Diego was able to render a small but perhaps vital service. He arranged when he came in, or after the prisoner came in, that the knob was left in a way that, while the door appeared quite shut, it required only the smallest pressure to open. It may well have saved a life.9 Juan de Diego also had the singular experience of meeting the Reichsführer-SS himself. Heinrich Himmler, or ‘Reichsheini’ as the German prisoners called him (not to his face), made two visits to Mauthausen after his initial visit in 1938. The first of the two took place on 27 April 1941, just after the arrival of the first convoy of Jews, and only two months after de Diego had been given the post. Himmler

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arrived with Dr Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Gauleiter August Eigruber,10 both of them Austrian. Unlike the two-metre tall Kaltenbrunner, whose facial scars enhanced his savage image, Himmler struck de Diego as a mild-mannered bourgeois. ‘The Reichsführer is banal’, was the impression he remembered. Moving about the camp with all the bland politeness of Edward VIII visiting an orphanage, Himmler remained calm and correct even when addressing the Lagerschreiber III. Leitzinger presented de Diego with the words, ‘Hier is ein Rotspanier.’ Himmler asked him if he was all right, and if he was eating well. ‘I knew I had to play the idiot,’ recalls de Diego, ‘and give no specific answer. So I threw my shoulders back with a shrug and a non-committal “Oh”, using pidgin German to say I couldn’t speak. At the time we knew nothing about Himmler, but we knew what was safe and what was unsafe.’ Himmler showed no expression, made no reply, and walked on. ‘There was nothing striking about his eyes,’ de Diego remembers. ‘They were the eyes of a dull bureaucrat. His arrogance showed in the way he held back his head.’11 Other reports suggest that there was nothing banal about this visit. Ziereis told his interrogators on his death-bed that Himmler was disappointed with him, since Mauthausen was killing only three per cent of its prisoners a day; the Reichsführer then set an example during his visit to the quarry by ordering a prisoner to turn and hurling a rock into his back.12 The story may have been the Lagerführer’s own invention: Ziereis may have been hoping to survive.13 Mauthausen did not yet have a gas chamber, but its floor had just been completed, and Himmler included it in his inspection. The three Spaniards, including Baldomero Chozas, who had worked three or four days on it, stood against the wall, rigidly to attention, as the Reichsführer, accompanied by Kaltenbrunner, Eigruber and the rest, examined their work.14 There is some evidence that Himmler also used his visit to test the effect of Zyklon-B gas, selecting a cell in the Bunker for the purpose.15 As for Himmler’s last visit, on 31 May 1943, KZ business may not have been its primary purpose at all: the excavations at Gusen had unearthed the earliest human relics ever found in Austria, dating back to 5000 BC, and Himmler wanted the best samples shipped to Nuremberg.16 The ways of the SS being virtually impenetrable to man, it may be useless to examine why, in 1943, the SS suddenly and briefly allowed the Spanish prisoners in Mauthausen to write home. Only in very special cases was any news of a Spanish prisoner sent by the German authorities to his next-of-kin. The Spaniards were thus treated very much as if they were in the category of Nacht und Nebel, even though only 33 Spaniards were officially classified NN, these being guerrilleros or urban Resistance members captured in France.17 While even the families of Soviet prisoners were sent a death certificate,18 Spaniards fell into the small category of those whose families were never informed.19 Perhaps as a result of the International Red Cross increasing its pressure, the prisoners now found themselves, at Christmas 1943, free to write home.20 Strict limitations were inevitably imposed. Prisoners were allowed to write only one letter every six weeks, and to receive only one reply every six weeks. Curiously, the standard rule that all correspondence had to be written in German was relaxed in the case of the Spaniards, who were the only

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group permitted to write in their own language. What they were permitted to write, of course, followed the standard rule. A card or letter could not exceed 25 words, and the first card was dictated by the SS. The contents thereafter never altered: ‘I am in good health, and everything here is fine’, followed by a few personal and innocuous phrases. It was Climent in the Politische Abteilung who had the job of examining the outgoing letters to ascertain their strict adherence to the rules before stamping them ‘geprüft’. As for incoming letters to Spanish prisoners written in Spanish or French, the task of censorship was given to Juan de Diego. The instructions under which he worked were to suppress any reference to Axis setbacks or defeats,21 but to these instructions de Diego added a censorship of his own: the suppression of news of any death in the family which might demoralize a prisoner. The overall responsibility for censorship was in the hands of SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans Altfuldisch, in command of the postal services, but it was asking too much of an SS to apply himself to reading letters; besides, the better the German in which an incoming letter was written, the less he would understand it. The Spaniards for their part benefited from this brief relaxation of the rules. Juan de Diego wrote twice: in December 1943 and in March 1944. Both letters arrived in Barcelona, and he received two replies. After that, no further correspondence was permitted.22 As for parcels, the International Red Cross was virtually powerless: the SS plundered them systematically.23 Mauthausen received fewer IRC parcels than Auschwitz, and far fewer than Buchenwald: some 250 against some 38 000; and while other camps began receiving parcels halfway through the war, none reached Mauthausen before mid-1944.24 And whenever a parcel arrived, the SS would plunder a half and the Kapos a half of what remained. During the period when the Spaniards were permitted to write home and tell their families they could write to them, many families in Spain responded by sending the prisoners international reply coupons. Some or most were properly stamped by the post office which issued them, but others lacked the necessary stamp. One day Altfuldisch, as head of Mauthausen’s postal services, summoned Juan de Diego to his office and told him to wrap all these coupons into a parcel and send them back to Spain. De Diego did so, and addressed the parcel to the most logical place, his own home, asking his family to handle the matter and return the coupons. The parcel, which bore de Diego’s name and number as a Mauthausen prisoner, was intercepted by the Gestapo in Linz, who leaped to the conclusion that the coupons were foreign currency and of real value, and that this was a case of money smuggling by a KZ prisoner! They at once arrived in the camp, informed Bachmayer, and summoned de Diego to Bachmayer’s office. De Diego was thus in the hands of the Gestapo when Altfuldisch arrived in the office and explained the matter, to the Gestapo’s satisfaction.25 De Diego’s work in the Lagerschreibstube brought him into frequent contact with Climent in the Politische Abteilung, and de Diego soon discovered that his compatriot and colleague Climent was capable of quite irrational behaviour, motivated by his need for distraction. He was to die insane. On two occasions he marched into the Schreibstube in a goose-step, with a replica of Hitler’s moustache,

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fashioned out of a blackened toothbrush, affixed to his face and all the while shouting ‘Was ist los?’ The second (and last) time he did it, he took the figure in the corner with his back turned toward him to be a Prominenter like himself. It proved to be the Rapportführer Kofler. Climent thought his life had ended. But Kofler’s reaction was astounding: he growled, but he also laughed, and the matter ended there.26 No Kazettler ever knew, from one moment to the next, what fate held in store for him.

3 A Spaniard enters the photo lab

Nothing was ultimately more precious to the Resistance than the decision of the SS to employ a Catalan from Tolosa, Antonio García Alonso, to work in the Erkennungsdienst, or photographic laboratory. García had arrived in France in the retreat from Catalonia in February 1939. He had been interned at Barcarès, enrolled in the 32nd Compagnie de travailleurs étrangers, and sent to the Maginot Line. There he had been captured in French uniform and sent, with 330 other Spaniards, to Stalag XVII-A, situated at Kaisersteinbruch, south-east of Vienna. They stayed there ten months, until one day the camp commandant announced that they could count themselves lucky: they were going to be liberated and sent to a rest camp. Some 300 of them were then embarked on a regular passenger train, second class, which carried them, on 7 April 1941, to Mauthausen station. The sudden shock of the reception at the station, and the brutal march to the fortress, were enough to tell them that they were no longer prisoners of war, and still less going to a rest camp. After the usual formalities, Antonio García was assigned, not to the quarry, but to the Baukommando, which was then engaged on building the south-eastern extension of the camp known as Lager III. On the morning of his fourth day of work, in that moment of bedlam after the roll-call when each prisoner rushed to take his place in his respective Arbeitskommando before it marched off, a Kapo arrived and called out the numbers ‘quarante-six soixante-cinq’. García froze at the sound of his prisoner number. Like every other prisoner, he knew that his number was now the only identity he had, and that his life depended upon recognizing it and repeating it in German. He was therefore doubly mystified, by hearing his number and by hearing it in French. It was only later that García discovered that the man was an Austrian Black who had served for five years in the French Foreign Legion, which explained why he had been arrested and how he spoke French. García responded at once. The Kapo approached him, seized his forearm, checked the number tag on his chest, and exchanged some words in German with the Kommando Kapo. He then led García to the main gate and to the chain at the side which was used for hanging. He was told to wait. It was a summons and a site that struck terror in every prisoner. Above him hung the heavy bronze bell in the tower, and beside the gate was the wailing wall; this was the place of the damned. How long he waited there he could never later recall, petrified as he was by the fear that the SS had made an error and that he was about to suffer the consequences of

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another prisoner’s violation of the rules. García remained at the gate while the great mass of prisoners passed through it on their way to work, the Kapos calling out the beat (‘Eins, zwei, drei, vier’), and he a mere spectator to the scene. He watched the way that many of them limped: simply to walk without socks in those wooden clogs could be an agony. When all had left, an eerie silence fell upon the Appellplatz, while García continued to stand there, feeling very small and lonely as he looked up at the high granite wall. The Kapo finally returned and led him through the gate to the Politische Abteilung, where he was ushered into a large room fitted out as a photographic studio, with the most modern equipment. There he found himself face to face with Schulz, puffing on his pipe, and the NCO in charge of the Erkennungsdienst, SS-Oberscharführer Friedrich (‘Fritz’) Kornacz. Schulz allowed another prisoner, who had fought in Spain and whom García was to know as the Polish Red Stefan Grabowski, to serve as his interpreter. To García’s profound relief, Schulz and Kornacks asked him about his knowledge of photography. García had stated, correctly, on the registration card which he had filled out as a prisoner of war, and which the Gestapo in Vienna had classified, that he had been trained as a photographer; his parents in Tortosa owned a photographic shop, and his father had taught him the trade. The SS were nevertheless anxious to find the very best candidate. Six prisoners were to be interviewed, a contest would be held, and the selection would be made at the end of a week. García was given a test with photographic materials, while Schulz stood close beside him, blowing smoke into his face. Despite this, the SS were highly impressed by García’s results. ‘Gut, Spanier, sehr gut, prima, Spanier,’ cried Schulz. The Kommando Kapo, who was also present, remarked to the SS that he could communicate orders to García in French until García learned German. The upshot was that Schulz and Kornacz decided to cancel the contest and appoint García, who would begin work the next morning. As a newcomer to the Prominenter class, he was first taken to the Lagerschreibstube to receive a Drillich befitting his post. García, who was tall, had received a Drillich so small that it ended at his forearms and calves, giving him the appearance of a scarecrow. He was now told to try on, in front of a mirror, several brand-new suits, stoically enduring the mock praise he received for his new elegance. García thus found himself employed in the Erkennungsdienst, located outside the fortress in the front of the Block that housed the Politische Abteilung and which consisted of nine rooms connected to a corridor running down the right side of the building. García was to see Schulz frequently, but he never entered his office, nor any other office in the compound. What he could testify to were the screams that frequently emanated from the back. On occasion a prisoner, as often as not a Jew, would flee down the corridor and enter the Erkennungsdienst before being hauled back by the SS. The work of the Erkennungsdienst varied, but its principal responsibilities were twofold: to photograph every prisoner on arrival as well as every prisoner who died, and to record the visits of all dignitaries to the camp. The only prisoners not to be photographed were the Spaniards, their photos having already been taken in the

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Stalags from which they arrived. A camera was installed in a fixed position, operated by a lever which took three shots of each prisoner, seated on a chair, from different angles (full-face, half-profile, profile), with the prisoner’s number placed beside him for the photo. Five prints (18 cm×13 cm) were made of every photo, with all five delivered to Schulz, who would distribute four of them to SS headquarters in Berlin, Oranienburg, Vienna and Linz.1 Throughout the entire period from García’s arrival in the laboratory in May 1941 to the liberation of the camp four years later, the SS officer responsible for the Erkennungsdienst was the only man authorized to take photographs. There was no other photographer, García insists, in any of the Nebenlager other than the SS responsible for the identification photos of incoming prisoners, and the prisoner-assistants in the Hauptlager served only to develop and print, and then classify and file the negatives. The practice of photographing every incident in the Hauptlager was abandoned by 1945, and certain events were never recorded. Nevertheless, the photographs taken ran into the tens of thousands; on a single occasion, that of Himmler’s second visit in 1941, no fewer than 4000 photos were taken. At other times, a single roll of film might offer a stunning variety: a marriage ceremony, an electrocution on the fence, an SS officers’ party, a hanging in the latrines. The staff under Kornacz consisted of another SS NCO, the 19-year-old Unterscharführer Hermann Peter Schinlauer, and six prisoners whose Kapo was an Austrian Red, a socialist party leader known only as Hans. The Kapo worked as the secretary, and was responsible for keeping a record of every print and negative and for delivering the prints to Schulz. Under him were three Poles: Grabowski, who handled the contact sheets, Johann Gralinski, who helped the Kapo in filing the negatives, and Miroslav Laskowka, who served in the difficult work of retouching, notably the portrait photos of the SS. The other two were Spaniards: Ruiz, who was responsible for keeping the place clean, and García, who now moved into the key position of developing the films and supervising the printing and enlargements. In this post García was taking over the work previously handled, perhaps inadequately, by Grabowski. He quickly discovered that Grabowski, who was the very first to be employed in the photo lab, had begun making a sixth print of certain selected photographs and storing his secret collection in the ceiling, behind the wooden beam. He at once told Grabowski that he was out of his mind: the extra copies were safer loose in a drawer. This was proved on one occasion when Schulz entered the lab, opened a drawer, found some prints, and asked the meaning of it. García replied that they were of poor quality and had had to be redone, which satisfied Schulz. The nagging fear of every member of this privileged class which García had now entered was to be dismissed from his post and sent to the quarry. Although he continued to wear his striped Drillich, he now slept in Block 2 with some 180 other Prominenten and rediscovered the luxury of bedsheets. Each morning after roll-call, Hans would march his six-man photography Kommando out of the main gate to the Erkennungsdienst, and there they would have their lunch, brought out to them from the kitchen Kommando inside the fortress. Their rations, as we shall see, were

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beyond the dreams of the average prisoner. But life in Block 2 did not spare anyone from the sordid reality of an SS camp. The Blockältester was a German Black, cross-eyed and very mean. Although playing cards were forbidden to Kapos as to all other prisoners, cards could be found, and on 10 February 1944, the day that Johann Zaremba, the Oberkapo of the quarry, was transferred to KL-Kauen in Lithuania, four or five Kapos in Stube B played to decide ownership of Zaremba’s catamite, a small, handsome, 17-year-old Russian boy who sat by the wall crying while they played. Perhaps he wept because he was being sold like a slave, or perhaps because against all logic he regretted to see Zaremba leave. To García the scene was memorable because Mauthausen was not a place for tears. Hitler’s attack of 22 June 1941 took place within weeks of García’s arrival in the Erkennungsdienst, and to his great relief Kornacz, who had proved himself a brute, was sent off to the eastern front. This left the young Nazi fanatic Schinlauer in charge until the arrival, on 23 June, of SS-Hauptscharführer Paul Ricken. Some 55 years of age, Ricken was to remain at Mauthausen as its photographer to the very end. While Schinlauer was very much a novice in photography, Ricken was a professional, and in García’s own professional opinion, a photographer of the highest calibre. More importantly, Ricken never laid a hand on a prisoner, or if he did, the prisoners noticed that he would do it only for effect, cuffing a prisoner’s ears whenever SS were nearby and watching him. Paul Ricken was that supreme rarity in Mauthausen, or anywhere in the Totenkopfverbände: a man of common decency. Just before the arrival of Ricken, it was decided to transfer the Erkennungsdienst from the Politische Abteilung to the eastern corner of the camp, again outside the fortress, to a Block which bore no number but which logically represented 25. The move was intended to be only temporary, while reconstruction work was done on the Politische Abteilung, but it turned out to be permanent. The reason for this is that Ricken soon came to hate and fear Schulz, and found every excuse not to return. He had two separate motives. First of all, he genuinely deplored the savagery of Schulz. Even if he never saw the torture, he was sickened at the sight of the executions, which indeed took place within a few yards of the new site of the Erkennungsdienst, and it was common for Schulz to be there in person. In the alley that separated the photo lab from Block 20 (the Death Block), Ricken was a witness to countless killings, especially of Soviets, and he would turn his eyes away and even weep. ‘Oh weh!’ he cried, in García’s presence, each time he saw it. ‘He would give his fellow SS the Heil Hitler salute,’ reports García, ‘but he never struck any one of us, and I believe we owe our lives to him.’ Ricken’s second reason was of a quite different order: he was deep in graft, and he felt that Schulz suspected it. Graft in the context of the photo lab consisted of agreeing to the requests of SS personnel to develop and print their private photographs, and though the prints were always small and of poor quality, the prices charged were well below those charged by a shop in the village. These photos included privately taken shots of camp atrocities, which was strictly forbidden, and SS men who were caught out could find themselves instant prisoners. Nevertheless,

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SS men of all ranks engaged in this practice. If Ricken was relatively unworried by it, it was because he was a close personal friend of August Eigruber, the Gauleiter of Oberdonau based in Linz, who was in turn a close friend of Lagerführer Ziereis. It was Grabowski, functioning in one of the two darkrooms in an unofficial capacity, who handled Ricken’s illegal traffic. The payment made to him, and to any other prisoner assistant who became involved, was in the currency most precious to them: food. The SS would carry a piece of bread or other food wrapped in a piece of paper, place it on the table, and leave without it. These photos, in García’s opinion, never included pornography. Pornography was certainly available to the SS, but it was produced by the artists in the architecture and design Kommando. In its new location, the Erkennungsdienst was housed on the west side (or Stube A) of the Block it shared with the disinfection Kommando, or Entlausungsanstalt, in Stube B. Stube A consisted of two parts. The entrance was in the corner closest to the execution site. Behind the reception desk and to the left was the Kapo’s desk and further to the left the table for retouching; behind them, lining the wall, was the cupboard and its shelves on which all the negatives were stored. In the centre of the room was the platform and the mounted camera used by Ricken, and on the other side of the room the table used for glossing. At the back, at each end, a door led into the second part of the Stube, with Ricken’s office in the middle and a photo lab on each side: one used by García, containing a bath and a toilet, and one by Grabowski. A door beside Ricken’s office led into the disinfection Kommando behind, with a shower room consisting of 12 nozzles.2 García had every reason to be thankful that Ricken had replaced Kornacz. While the Spaniard, like everyone else, had to address the officer in German, Ricken was indulgent while his predecessor would punish him for his grammatical errors. At the same time, Ricken proceeded in his professional manner to reorganize the work of the laboratory, matching the jobs more closely to the skills of the prisoners. All the while, the secret work of printing the sixth copy continued. Grabowski had succeeded in transferring his own collection from the Politische Abteilung to the new site, and it was now García who took over the work. On one occasion Ricken noticed that seven prints had been made instead of the regulatory five, and angrily asked García what it meant. García replied that two of the seven were of inferior quality and had had to be redone. Ricken told him not to let it happen again, and tore the two extra prints into fragments. Ricken was still a loyal Nazi. He kept a map of the eastern front on the wall of his office, with markers in the vicinity of Leningrad and Stalingrad. The markers never moved. Following the surrender of Paulus at Stalingrad, the news bulletins, which had hitherto been a regular feature of the prisoners’ everyday life, were suddenly suspended. It was over five months before they were resumed, at which point they spoke of a raging battle at Kursk. It was with the help of Ricken’s map that the prisoners learned to what extent the Wehrmacht was in retreat. But if Ricken gave no indication yet of his doubts regarding the outcome of the war, a bond had begun to form between the captor Ricken and the captive García, based partly on mutual

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respect for the professionalism of the other, and partly on Ricken’s realization that García knew about the graft around him. The result of this bond was that Ricken readily agreed, at the end of 1942, to García’s request for an assistant to handle the stupendous workload brought about by the floods of incoming prisoners. García reported the matter to his fellowCatalan Joan Tarragó, who worked in the SS officers’ kitchen and who was his immediate superior in the Spanish network. The choice of the communist leaders who controlled the network was another Catalan, Francesc Boix Campo, who was already a Prominenter. Boix was a quick-thinking, scrappy youth from the Barcelona underworld (‘tall, lean, and intense’, as he was described at his appearance at the Nuremberg Trial)3 who had understood, from the moment of his arrival, the importance to every prisoner’s survival of knowing German, and it seems that he had some natural gift in languages. As a result, he understood German well enough to have been appointed an interpreter, and he showed no interest in changing his post. He also knew very little about photography: he had worked in the Mayo photo agency in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, but he was only 15 when the war began and was thus only an apprentice. The Spanish network, however, had made its decision, and the myth was now created that he had worked during the Civil War as a photo reporter for the youth journal Juventud. Boix readily admitted to García when they met that he really did not know enough about photography, that he had forgotten the little he knew, and that he was terrified that he would be exposed as a fraud. In fact, Boix had little to fear. He never set foot in the darkroom, García insists in his testimony; incapable of developing and printing, he sat at the reception desk and was given charge of operating the lever which alternated the angles of Ricken’s camera, standing to his right on the platform and moving to his command, and later of glossing and filing the negatives. García had been eager to have an assistant who was Spanish, and especially one who was Catalan. Catalans are said to have, among their sovereign virtues, pragmatism, independence of mind, and above all seny, a natural level-headedness. For these reasons, García had pressed Boix to accept the offer, but he soon came to regret it, for reasons that had nothing to do with photography. At the time he crossed from Spain into France, Boix had contracted meningitis, a disease that was then highly dangerous, with the majority of its victims dying. Those who survived might suffer brain damage, which would explain, in Boix’s case, his nervous ticks, and the illness seems to have aggravated the natural unpleasantness in his character. At the end of 1942, when Boix arrived in the Erkennungsdienst, the Kommando had never encountered any problems. Now they proliferated. All had their origin in the behaviour of Boix. The Spanish Communist Party was to turn Boix into a Party hero, and Antonio García into a Trotskyist, a faint-heart, or a malcontent, depending on the source. García is certainly a dissident and an outcast, though the Party never expelled him nor has he (in 1998) resigned from the Party. He has nevertheless challenged it, more than once, to tell the truth. In a number of letters addressed to Mariano Constante (who, as a Party loyalist and champion of Boix, knows better than to

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attempt to reply to any of the letters), García provided a detailed account of Boix’s conduct. Since Boix had little to do in the Erkennungsdienst, he had plenty of time for intrigue. His motive was largely the quest for personal advantage; his method was to ingratiate himself into the favour of the SS. This resulted in a number of quarrels among the prisoners, in which García attempted to intervene and make Boix see reason, but it was to no avail. García writes: ‘His readiness to lick the boots of the SS sickened us all. Whenever an SS was about to leave the Erkennungsdienst, Boix, and only Boix, would rush to offer to shine his boots, kneeling at his feet, on one occasion even snatching the brush that the SS officer had picked up. If there was a spot of dust, or hair, or thread, on the SS officer’s uniform, Boix would remove it. When the SS left, the others in the Kommando would come to me to express their contempt, and their concern for the reputation of the Kommando in the eyes of the prisoners in general—a matter of grave importance.’ Boix’s unctuous flattery of the SS, García tells us, did not end there. Boix would refer to Bachmayer as ‘our dad’. It was as if Bachmayer had temporarily taken the place of Stalin. ‘Several other Spanish comrades in the Party,’ adds García, ‘began to refer to the “bloody gypsy” as the “father of all the Spaniards”.’ More and more García was drawn to the conclusion that his superior in the Party, Tarragó, when told that Boix was a sycophant, an intriguer and a tale-bearer, was at fault for not taking control of the situation, which steadily became worse. In the year that the German prisoners were the champions in the football league, they were invited, being German, to play the SS on the SS field outside the fortress. Boix informed García that he had asked Bachmayer for permission for the two of them to leave the fortress on the following Sunday at 2 p.m. in order to watch the match, and that Bachmayer had at once agreed. García told Boix that he must be sick to want to attend the match, and refused to be a part of it. Boix went anyway. ‘He was the lone prisoner,’ writes García, ‘amid a crowd of spectators made up exclusively of SS.’ On another occasion, Boix had to be protected from his own audacity. Schinlauer remained in the Erkenhungsdienst under Ricken, though he had little to do. Still very young, perhaps 20 years old, and thus the same age as Boix, he liked to fool around. So did Boix, and on one occasion he suggested to Schinlauer that they box. García, who was present, at once drew Boix away, telling him that this was the world’s most dangerous sport. Suppose they sparred, and suppose Boix connected with a single light blow to Schinlauer’s head, or merely found an opening in his guard, the humiliation would be too great for an SS and Schinlauer could turn, in one brief instant, from a human being into a monster. So could they all, even perhaps Ricken. No man ever entered the SS and remained what he was before. Boix’s lack of elementary prudence was shown on a further occasion when, in the Erkennungsdienst and in front of García, he told Ricken: ‘We communists in the camp are organized as a party.’ This totally unnecessary statement enraged even Ricken, who now snapped back: ‘What you are is a bunch of losers, and not one of you is going to get out of here alive.’ When Ricken left, García explained to Boix the enormity of what he had said. Boix replied that with Ricken they could have

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total confidence. García answered that with the SS no one could ever have any confidence at all. On this point, García later conceded that Boix was right, since Ricken kept the matter to himself, for otherwise the entire Spanish communist contingent would have been liquidated. Boix’s penchant for telling tales to the SS, on the other hand, reflected an even darker side to his character. Ricken never listened to him, but Schinlauer did, and Boix’s usual target and victim was Grabowski. ‘Grabowski kommen!’ Schinlauer would order. Grabowski would step out of his darkroom and stand at attention in front of Schinlauer. ‘Brille ab!’ Schinlauer would shout. Grabowski would take his glasses off and then receive a powerful slap to each side of his face. ‘Boix would stand there,’ wrote García, ‘rubbing his hands with glee, which left the rest of us frozen in horror and fury. It happened many times. On one occasion, after Schinlauer left, Grabowski raced back to his darkroom to return with a pair of enormous scissors. I managed to wrest them from him. Afterwards I tried, again and again, to tell Boix to leave this good man alone, to no avail.’ It is not an unreasonable assumption that Boix provided Schulz with the information on Grabowski’s wife that led to Grabowski’s mutilation and death, which we shall examine later. There were other occasions that attested to Boix’s natural sadism. One morning on the Appellplatz, with Bachmayer present, the photo lab Kommando was lined up alongside another Kommando, made up of some 20 of the most exhausted prisoners, which was responsible for darning the socks of the SS. García recognized one of them as the brother of Gregorio López Raimundo, a leader of the Catalan Communist Party. All were in such poor physical condition that they had difficulty even in standing up. When Bachmayer ordered the Kommando to march, it could barely shuffle. ‘This lot is good only for the crematorium!’, shouted Bachmayer. This brought guffaws from the SS in attendance, and even from some prisoners. As for Boix, standing next to García, ‘his whole body twisted with laughter as he joined in’. There was more, and worse, as we shall see. The executions that took place alongside the Erkennungsdienst provided Boix with further opportunity, and in his treacherous assault on his fellow-countryman he broke all his records. But if Boix was able afterwards to salvage his reputation, and that he certainly did, it was because he was involved in other incidents that redounded to his credit. Having little to do in the Erkennungsdienst, he was made responsible for reporting to the kitchen Kommando inside the fortress and picking up the lunch food for the Erkennungsdienst prisoners. The SS officer in charge of the kitchen loved to take photographs, and to save money gave his private films to Ricken. As a result, the SS began giving the prisoners in the photo lab not merely extra rations, but more food than they could eat. The irony of having a surplus of food while thousands of fellowprisoners were starving to death was not lost on the six-man photo Kommando, and indeed nothing was wasted, or returned. It was Boix again who made sure that the remainder reached his network. Inevitably, this traffic in private films was discovered, by Ziereis himself. Dropping in one day on the Erkennungsdienst, the

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Lagerführer happened to see some private photos, which, if they did not depict atrocities, showed SS men in antic positions, such as pretending to bayonet one another in the backside. Furious at the levity of it all, Ziereis at once ordered García and Boix to the Strafkompanie in the quarry. It seemed like the end of the road for both. García was experiencing the reality of the quarry for the first time, and in all its terror. But the very next day Ricken persuaded Ziereis that he needed their help in the lab, and to the inexpressible relief of the two prisoners, they were released, and returned to the Erkennungsdienst.4 García’s vital work continued. No doubt he had some notion that the preservation of the photographs would be of service to the future, if ever the future belonged to something other than Nazi Germany. What he could not have guessed is that the photographs that he was saving would ultimately become virtually the only photographic record of an SS camp in operation: the Mauthausen collection was in fact bigger than the total number of photos that survive of all other SS camps combined. With Climent in the Politische Abteilung, Juan de Diego in the Lagerschreibstube, and Antonio García in the Erkennungsdienst, anyone would have to say that the Spaniards had secured the best positions of any national group at Mauthausen for the conservation of the history of the camp. A fourth Spaniard should be mentioned: Ramón Bargueño, who differs from the other three, since the others were selected for their posts on the basis of their intelligence or expertise. Bargueño, a man with no education, was simply lucky, but from the moment that he was chosen, with the approval of ‘King Kong’, for the post of custodian (Kalfaktor) of the prison, he was often the sole surviving witness of the unsurpassed atrocities committed in that building, all of which had to be recorded on film by the SS photographer Paul Ricken, whose visits were frequent. Bargueño moved into the Bunker on 31 August 1943 (his birthday) and remained there until the end, with the exception of those moments when Allied prisoners of war from the West arrived, notably the 47 Dutch, British and American agents in September 1944. At such times, he admits, he and his assistants were removed from the Bunker. This admission surely puts an end to a conflict among survivors that exists even now, over 50 years after the Liberation. Juan de Diego cannot conceal his contempt for Bargueño, based on the mediocrity of his published testimony.5 Bargueño responds that this accusation is unjust and insists that de Diego never entered the Bunker: ‘The closest that any Prominenter was permitted was the grill at the outer gate.’ On this matter Bargueño not only contradicts himself6 but overlooks the fact that, at the moment the Allied prisoners were interned there, he (Bargueño) had been told to leave and de Diego (for a special purpose that we shall see) was ordered inside. It is necessary to recognize, therefore, that each of the two is the sole surviving witness of the events in the Bunker that they describe, and that each, in the author’s opinion, is presenting the facts as accurately as he can. Bargueño describes with horror the moment of his arrival in the Bunker, because the prisoner in the second cell on the right in the inmates’ wing was dying from the wounds inflicted on him by the SS dogs, and shortly afterwards the crematorium

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Kommando arrived to take the body away. Bargueño then made the acquaintance of his compatriot Ángel Chacón, from Aranjuez, who had been working in the Bunker since the previous year. It is not to Bargueño’s credit that, in his published account, he does not refer to Chacón by name. The two Spaniards took an instant dislike to each other, with Bargueño infuriated by Chacón’s insis tence that he was in charge and by his callousness towards the sufferings of the prisoners. One of their disputes was interrupted by an SS who told them he was tired of their continual squabbles and ordered them to strip down and fight it to the finish, with the winner to be appointed Kapo. With a wide advantage in size, Bargueño won, but the bad relationship continued until January 1945, when Chacón left the Bunker and was replaced (in March) by two other Spaniards. The work in the Bunker was of considerable variety: it consisted of shining the boots of the SS, cleaning the anteroom and the washrooms, picking up the food for the SS and the prisoners in the Bunker, and carrying the clothes of those who had entered the gas chamber to the disinfection Kommando; this last he did with a barrow that he wheeled out through the main gate and along the wall, taking the same route that Antonio García would take to the photo lab. Bargueño, who ate in the Bunker but slept in Block 12, was thus in daily contact with other key participants, especially Francesc Boix in the photo lab.7 The contact between these two Party members was to be of very great importance to the preservation of the purloined photos.

4 Franco’s consulate in Vienna

From the time of the Anschluss in 1938, the Spanish Embassy in Vienna, like other embassies, had been reduced to a consulate, and with Franco’s victory in 1939 Spain’s diplomatic missions moved into his hands. The Spanish Consulate in Vienna was situated at Argentinierstrasse 34—almost next door to the SS and Police Court at Argentinierstrasse 16—and the official who was the most closely connected with events in Mauthausen was Guillermo Pecker y Cardona, as consul in 1941 and as chancellor, or First Secretary, in 1944.1 The Spanish diplomatic archives in question are understandably difficult to access, but the Bundesarchiv in Berlin contain over 500 documents of correspondence between the Spanish Consulate and the German authorities2 and between the Spanish Consulate and other Spanish diplomatic centres and missions. These documents presumably fell into Allied hands at the time of the invasion of Austria in 1945. While they are too few in number to provide any overall interpretation of the operations of the Spanish Consulate in Vienna, they serve nevertheless to give some important indications. The contents of the correspondence demolishes the claim of Serrano Súñer, Franco’s Foreign Minister, that no one in the Spanish Embassy in Berlin had any knowledge of the fate of the Spaniards brought into Germany. Various letters were written by Pecker Cardona in the Spanish Consulate in Vienna which were addressed to the Kommandantur of KL-Mauthausen, requesting the personal effects of a particular Spanish prisoner whose death had been notified to the Consulate. The first case in the surviving records concerned Jaime Martínez Aliaga, who died in the Gusen Revier on 17 March 1941. Pecker wrote to ask for any of the prisoner’s personal letters, for the purpose, he added, of returning them to his next of kin.3 Such requests were handled at Mauthausen by Eisenhöfer, as the officer responsible for the Effektenkammer, and the replies he sent to the Consulate carried his clearly legible signature, a rarity in the case of Nazi officials. These replies always ended with the same phrase, with only minor changes of wording and none of meaning: ‘The ashes of the deceased will be preserved in the municipal ash-cemetery in SteyrOberdonau.’ A memorandum signed by SS-Oberscharführer Krüger in the camp’s crematorium, not addressed to the Spanish Consulate but entered in its files, repeats this odd misrepresentation of the facts. The corpse in question was incinerated, according to the memorandum, not in the camp’s crematorium but in

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Mauthausen’s public crematorium, and the ashes were buried in the cemetery of Steyr-Oberdonau.4 Occasionally, the Gestapo headquarters in Berlin would write directly to the Spanish Consulate in Vienna regarding the personal data of Spanish prisoners which the consulate had requested.5 Occasionally, the Spanish Embassy in Berlin would take the initiative on behalf of a Spanish prisoner, as was the case with Juan Bautista Nos Fibla, who found himself actually released from Mauthausen on 22 August 1941; he then applied to obtain the release of his father, José Nos Juan, but his father succumbed soon afterwards, on 16 October 1941.6 A similar case involved Juan de Diego, who as the Lagerschreiber III had had the unusual distinction earlier of meeting the Reichsführer-SS, and who now caught the interest of the Spanish Embassy in Berlin. The matter began when Father Luis García, rector of San José de la Montaña, a convent for sick and abandoned children in the north of Barcelona, took an interest in his case. The two men were distant cousins but had never met. Knowing only that Juan de Diego had been taken prisoner by the Germans, Father García decided to send a letter, dated 16 September 1941, to the Count de Mayalde, Franco’s Ambassador to Berlin. It is unlikely that Luis García knew the Count de Mayalde; his only motive seems to have been a sense of Christian duty. A letter of reply from the Spanish Embassy in Berlin duly reached him in Barcelona. The letter, dated 14 April 1942 and signed per pro by Alonso Caso, referred to information received by the Spanish Embassy from the competent German authorities (a euphemism for the Gestapo), according to which Juan de Diego was ‘still in KL-Mauthausen, in good health and fit to work’.7 The consulate in Vienna was now receiving a number of letters, some addressed to the Spanish Embassy in Berlin and forwarded to Vienna, from wives and other relatives in Spain and France who were desperate for information about their menfolk. Some of the women could not even sign their name, and had to solicit the help of the parish priest or local official who affixed their thumb-print (identified as the thumb of the right hand). Others, in Spain, at the mercy of the Franco authorities, wrote letters which they obviously hoped would ingratiate them into the favour of the régime, with references to the Glorious Victors and to the Red Criminals who had been chased from the motherland. The consulate would indeed write on their behalf to the Kommandantur in Mauthausen to request death certificates, and the Kommandantur would reply with the equivalent of a death certificate, the SS symbol for Dead being . In such cases, the standard terminology was maintained. Antonio Martínez Pérez, who died in Gusen on 17 March 1941, succumbed to ‘heart failure’.8 A similar reference to ‘blood circulation deficiency’ was expressed in a letter which bore the stamp of Reinhard Heydrich as chief of the Sipo-SD and which attested to the death of Eudaldo Mercade Martí on 24 October 1941 in Mauthausen’s ‘hospital’, the term Krankenbau being used instead of the normal Krankenlager or Revier.9 Only one case is known of a prisoner’s personal effects being sent to the Spanish Consulate in Vienna. Antonio Manit Perich died in Gusen on 15 November 1941. The SS-Obersturmführer in Gusen responsible for the personal effects of prisoners

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sent the consulate an account, with a sum of money but no other belongings. The money amounted to RM 3,50, but 20 Pfennig was deducted to cover the cost of postage.10 The money, consisting of three Rentenmark and three coins, was never forwarded to the next of kin; it remained in the Spanish Consulate, and is today in his file in the Bundesarchiv in Berlin. Letters continued to arrive at the Spanish Consulate from distraught wives and widows in Spain, several of whom had changed their name, presumably back to their maiden name. One such was Juana Fajardo Cortés, married to José Rodríguez Herruzo, who died in Mauthausen on 10 October 1941. Pecker Cardona, as consul, wrote to her to say that her husband died of an ‘intestinal ulcer’. As for the death certificate, he added blithely, she should apply for that to the Foreign Ministry in Madrid.11 A similar reaction was shown in the case of Teresa Rás, who had been informed that her husband, Antonio Díaz Cañada, was dead. As a widow in Tarragona with two children, she wrote to the Spanish Consul in Vienna, on 29 December 1942, requesting a death certificate; her letter was entered in the register of the consulate. In this case the consulate’s inquiries were answered by the Landgerichtspräsident in Linz, who obtained information from the registry office in Mauthausen. The death certificate was enclosed, and was duly entered in the register of the Spanish Consulate.12 But the Consul did not write to Teresa Rás, or send her the death certificate. The widow therefore wrote again with her request, and her letter, though undated, was entered in the consulate register on 27 February 1943. Pecker Cardona finally replied on 2 March 1943, providing her with fictional details of her husband’s death, and— while holding the death certificate in question—informed the widow that she had to apply for it to the Foreign Ministry in Madrid.13 The notification of mortalities to the Spanish authorities was not apparently systematic, but it continued on. The Spanish Embassy in Berlin received information on the death of a Spaniard in October 1943 not from the German authorities but from the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Trade.14 In the Hauptlager, Eisenhöfer, in charge of the Effektenkammer, continued to send the Spanish Consulate memoranda to the effect that a Spanish prisoner had died without leaving any gold or valuable objects behind, as in the case of Ángel Ojer Ruil, who, Eisenhöfer added, had ‘worn out or used up’ (verbraucht)—perhaps in Mauthausen’s canteen— whatever he had brought in.15 Even as late as August 1944, the Kommandantur in Mauthausen was still providing the Spanish Consulate in Vienna with the details of the deaths of Spaniards in Mauthausen, either enclosing the corresponding death certificates or informing the consulate that these had been sent to the Landgericht in Linz with the request that, after entry in its files, they be forwarded to the consulate. Such was the case of Estéban Rovira Rovira, who died on 1 August 1941 and whose ashes, once again, were reportedly conveyed to the municipal cemetery in Steyr.16 The last item of correspondence to fall into Allied hands was a request from the Spanish Consulate in Vienna for the personal effects of a Spanish Republican of note, and who was long since dead. Román Busquets Gelabert was an engineer and, as a major in the Republican forces, had commanded the Barcelona airfield during

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the Spanish Civil War. After passing through Stalag VIIA (Moosburg) in 1940, he had arrived in Mauthausen and was, as we have seen, among the victims who were gassed in the mobile gas-chamber between Mauthausen and Gusen, his death certificate showing that he died in Gusen on 30 September 1941.17 Pecker Cardona, who had moved up from consul at the Consulate in Vienna in 1941 to Chancellor by October 1944, had witnessed the various relocations that the consulate had undergone, unquestionably as a result of Allied bombing and ultimately of the Soviet advance. In January 1944 it was still on Argentinierstrasse in Vienna, but at number 46, no longer at 34. By October 1944 it was no longer in Vienna but in Altmünster on Lake Traunsee.18 There the Spanish diplomats could delight in the beauty of the lake, and, whenever they wished, take an excursion by limousine or boat to a village on its southern shore, just 15 kilometres away—a place called Ebensee.

5 A marriage at Auschwitz

Meanwhile at Auschwitz, in the spring of 1944, an event took place that may have had no parallel anywhere in the SS archipelago: an inmate received permission to get married, to a woman brought in from outside. The woman, Margarita Ferrer, from Madrid, had entered battle in the Spanish Civil War at the age of 20, and in the course of the struggle fell in love with an Austrian, Rudolf Friemel, fighting in the International Brigades. In 1939 they entered France together as refugees. In July 1941, with their baby son Édouard, they were arrested on the station platform at Vierzon while they were trying to make their way to Vienna and the home of Friemel’s parents. While Friemel was sent to Auschwitz I, where he was employed as a mechanic in the SS garage, Margarita passed through a forced-labour camp in the Black Forest, before finding refuge in the Friemels’ home in Vienna. It was there that she received word from Rudolf, who had moved into a leading position in the rudimentary Auschwitz resistance, that he had requested permission from the SS to marry her, so that the child could carry his name. From the depth of her distress, Margarita smiled at the hopeless gesture, and then, to the astonishment of all, on 6 March 1944, a year after Rudolf had made his application, she received a telegram summoning her, with Rudolf’s father and brother who would serve as witnesses, to report to Auschwitz for her marriage. On the freezing morning of 18 March 1944, the party arrived at Auschwitz station, the bride wearing a black costume hastily prepared and a borrowed white blouse and carrying the three-year-old Édouard. A car was waiting for them. The ceremony was held in a large empty office, with files all along one wall, a large table in the middle, and three rows of benches in front. A group of SS placed themselves to the side and to the back of the bridal group. An SS officer read out the marriage rites, which Rudolf translated into Spanish for his bride. Rudolf produced two rings, the couple signed, the ceremony ended. But more followed. A prisoner working in the Erkennungsdienst was permitted to take photographs— which survive, as do the greetings cards which the SS allowed Rudolf’s prison comrades to design and draw on thick cardboard. Margarita even carried a bouquet of flowers as she and Rudolf, escorted out by the camp orchestra playing a wedding march, walked freely through the empty camp. As they walked, Margarita remembered, they saw a light in each other’s eyes, not of hope but of triumph over death. At the end of the day, the bridal pair were given a part of Block 24, normally used as the brothel, while

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prisoners had been assigned to prepare the wedding breakfast. Two bedrooms were also prepared, one for the couple and child, the other for Rudolf’s father and brother. That evening Rudolf played for a long time with his little boy, and then they talked, on and on, Rudolf speaking for a moment of the gas chamber and the thousands who died each day. He did not think they would ever meet again, but he promised to struggle to the end. At dawn the next day, Margarita said goodbye. They embraced at the door. He turned, his shoulders hunched, and never looked back once. That marriage was to be the only success he ever achieved. Ten months later, on 30 December 1944, Rudolf Friemel and four other prisoners who had attempted to escape were hanged in the standard ceremony. It was to be the last public execution at Auschwitz; the liberation followed on 18 January. In a farewell note to Margarita, Friemel wrote: ‘I hoped to see you again, you and my dear little boy, but I could not give up the fight. It was impossible for me. And now my time has come. I am not sad, and you mustn’t be either, my gentle little wife. After the war, you will return to Spain. Take care of our little son. Make him a man and a fighter. And seek out a future for yourself that will help you to forget these unhappy times. My last thoughts will be of you.’ After Franco died, Margarita returned to Spain, but only to visit. France was now her home, and in 1956 she married Francisco Suárez, a Spanish refugee like herself, and a survivor of Mauthausen.1

6 Holy Night

Christmas at Mauthausen! Weihnachten! Night of solemn mood, of pagan spirits rampant. Sadness and joy combined. What emotions the season stirred in the breast of every SS. Night of infinite yearning, when the pagan soul, freed from its routine labour, gave itself to Träumerei, Sehnsucht, Seelenkleister, Weltschmerz even, for where would the world be without Nazi Kultur? For the Spaniards especially, coming from a country where the Christmas tree was unknown, the sight of the SS, side by side with German Green Kapos, singing and weeping together as they caroused beside their tree, inspired a particular revulsion. Few of the Spaniards were practising Catholics, or even Catholics, but Christmas without a Belén or Cradle of Bethlehem reminded even the most fervent atheist that in an SS camp everything was denied. God was banished. Prisoners were punished for drawing the image of Christ. Only the tree remained; the tree, but not the Tree. The tree was their link to Herminius, the mythical hero who saved all things good from the grasp of the barbaric hordes piling in from the east. It should be remembered that the SS, for the most part, were alone and lonely. The officers had their wives. The NCOs and the men had only their home leave, and this was getting rarer, and more and more unsettling as they found their towns and cities increasingly laid waste by Allied air attack. As for the prisoners, it is the very nature of a nightmare that people, events, place and time become mingled and confused. If their accounts sometimes conflict, it is a pardonable confusion. For some who wrote their memoirs, decades had passed before they put their thoughts to paper. It was the last two Christmases that were the most remembered. Holy Night at Mauthausen in 1943 inspired the SS to erect a tree on the Appellplatz some 10 metres in height, as if to vie with the chimney of the crematorium. Decorating it on either side was a scaffold, and enlivening the event on the loudspeakers was the Overture to Twilight of the Gods. Seven Soviets and three Yugoslavs, all dressed in shredded undershirts, were hanged, five on each side. One cried ‘Long live Stalin!’, but so faintly that it sounded like the cry of a child.1 Another tree, perhaps even higher, and lit with fairy lights, was erected that same Christmas at Wiener-Neudorf, side by side with the gallows. The prisoners spent Christmas Eve forced to sit around the tree on a freezing night and sing ‘O Tannenbaum’, all night.2

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Of all Christmases at Mauthausen, the one most often described was that at Ebensee in 1944. At 7 p.m. on another freezing Christmas Eve, the work Kommandos returned to the camp, staggering with fatigue, sliding on the hard snow, to find on the Appellplatz the highest tree of all, some 15 metres high, held in place by 15 cables. A Kommando of 50 men had worked all day to set it up, and there it stood, in its fairy beauty, decorated on every branch to the top with hundreds of garlands and light-bulbs of every colour. Karl and his orchestra were there, their repertoire no broader than before. A revue was staged, with Spanish skits and Spanish dances, performed by Spaniards who had long rehearsed their numbers. These were very well received, so it was said,3 by prisoners and the SS alike: the prisoners never more close to death than now, and the SS elated by the latest news. If the Red Army was at the gates of Warsaw and Budapest, was not von Rundstedt on his way to the gates of Antwerp? Could any survivor be blamed if his jumbled mind stored memories that confused atrocious facts with frightful imaginings? The Frenchman Paul Tillard, whose first novel had been published in 1938, had been arrested in 1942 as leader of a resistance group and sent to Mauthausen and then Ebensee. Seriously wounded in the head in early 1945, blinded for weeks, then stricken with typhus, he nevertheless survived, returning to his life as a novelist and at the same time producing two memoirs of Mauthausen and Ebensee, the first in 1945 and the second 20 years later. Both depict the hanging at Ebensee at Christmas 1944 of a 17-year-old Italian boy, the later edition expanding on the first. The boy had fallen asleep one day in the corner of his Block. Four SS guards escort the boy to the Appellplatz. Behind them comes Ganz, with his two favourite dogs striding at his heels, their bellies close to the ground. The whole forest, it seems, is frozen in a deathly silence as the SS drag the boy up on to a table, and then on to a chair on top of the table. His arms are pinned back behind him on to a beam mounted between two trees. An SS NCO reads the sentence, which is translated by interpreters into five languages. First the chair is kicked away, and then the table. The two dogs spring, as the lights go on. Abbé Jean, close to Tillard, drops to his knees in prayer. Ten thousand prisoners hold their breath as the dogs tear off a foot and then fight for it. ‘Pietà, commandante, pietà!’ cries the boy. Ganz ends his agony with a bullet behind the neck.4 None of the ten thousand witnesses has ever publicly contradicted Tillard’s account, but none has corroborated it either. When atrocities are the casual business of every day, it may be churlish to argue details. But it should be remembered that Tillard contracted typhus very soon after this event. Another survivor who did the same, David Rousset in another SS camp, remarks that typhus has the effect of destroying memory. The victim can forget everything, including his own marriage. Little by little, adds Rousset, everything came back to him—except the entire period in which he was in hospital with typhus. Another survivor of Ebensee, who was not a victim of typhus, provides a different account of this event. The Spaniard Francisco Bernal had been transferred from the Mutterlager to Ebensee in 1943 as Kapo of the cobblers, a Kommando which numbered 33, including two other

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Spaniards and a Jew, whose ethnic origin Bernal managed to conceal. Ebensee, Bernal insists, did not have a Christmas tree, either in 1943 or 1944, in the two winters when it was in operation. As for the Italian boy, Bernal remembers him as younger, perhaps only 14-years-old. He had dodged work that day, hiding while his Kommando left. On that Christmas Eve, Bernal reported as usual to the office of ‘King Kong’ to pick up his orders for the next day, and found ‘King Kong’ and his assistant, the Lagerältester II Lorenz, together with the boy. Bernal asked ‘King Kong’ what he intended to do with him. ‘None of your business!’ replied ‘King Kong’. In fact, adds Bernal, Ganz had given Lorenz the order to hang the boy, and this was carried out by Lorenz between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m.—behind Block 9. There were no dogs tearing off his feet on the Appellplatz, and there was no cry to Ganz for ‘Pietà, commandante’—or at least it was not heard. Bernal did not see the body, but he heard the next morning that it was still hanging there behind Block 9.5 The famous incident at Ebensee of the Christmas tree and the Italian boy and the dogs, emerges not as a fabrication but as an amalgam of events that happened, but not together, and Tillard, who died in 1966, was almost certainly unaware of his error. But error it is, and only a miraculous exception to the rule—that no Kazettler ever kept a personal diary of each day’s horrors—allows the truth to be fixed, and the result serves as a warning to every historian who relies on eye-witness testimony. The diarist was the Czech political prisoner Drahomir Barta, who, like his compatriot Přemysl Dobiáš, held a doctorate in law. He had the habit of keeping a diary from early childhood, and since he was appointed Lagerschreiber from the first day of his arrival at Ebensee, he took the risk of maintaining it persistently and persuaded a fellow-Czech, Alois Drabek, who was the Blockschreiber of Block 18, to empty the Minimax fire-extinguisher in that Block and use it to store his diary. The entry for 23 December 1944 reads: ‘A Saturday. In the evening to Block 18. Music, a Christmas tree erected by the Spaniards.’ If we accept the logic that Barta’s diary is the most accurate source we have, then Bernal’s account suffers like Tillard’s, but in fairness to Bernal, executions at Ebensee were normally carried out in front of the kitchen Block, and at Ebensee the Schreibstube, the kitchen and the Appellplatz stood side by side. Bernal remains an honest witness to a part of the story, but only Barta’s account provides the whole. Danilo Veronesi, the Italian boy who almost lacked a name, was born in Caprino Veronese in mid-1926 (even the records disagree on the birthdate6). He joined the Partigiani and was arrested on 2 January 1944 by the fascist militia ‘Muti’, who deported him to Mauthausen on 11 March of that year. A Wehrmacht officer in Italy who knew about the boy’s deportation and who spoke Italian well was overheard to say, ‘Sending boys to Germany is a lousy thing for the Italians to do’. On 25 March 1944, Veronesi was transported to Ebensee, where, on the evening of 12 May 1944, he disappeared. There had already been several cases of prisoners hiding inside the camp instead of reporting to the Appell, and they were recorded as fugitives. In Veronesi’s case, after the Appell, bread and other items were found missing from his Block, and it was assumed he had used the Appell to steal them and was still in the camp. The normal prize of 200 cigarettes was duly announced as the

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reward for Veronesi’s capture, and the prize was predicated on an SS calculation: the fugitive had on his conscience the punishment, and indeed the execution, of his closest co-prisoners, and thus he had stepped outside the community and its protection. But Veronesi was not hiding in the camp. He had hidden that day in the work unit outside the tunnels, where he buried himself in the stacked timber and waited until the work detail returned to the camp. He then set out to walk home to Verona, across the Alps, without a map, without a compass, without food, in his Drillich, and without speaking a word of German. All this was a reflection of his character: he was simple, naïve, of below average intelligence, but with a loving heart, generous by nature, ready to trust, and yearning to see his mother again. He had travelled only 12 kilometres from the camp when, on 14 May, he was found in the forest by an Austrian forester who knocked him unconscious. When he was brought back to the Lager he was in a pitiful condition, his head swollen from the beatings by the forester, but in his natural simplicity, on finding himself in front of the interpreter Hrvoje Macanovic, he asked if there would be any supper for him in the Block! Supper was not what Ebensee’s commandant, SS-Obersturmführer Otto Riemer, had in mind. The Lagerleiter was, as usual, drunk, and he was enraged that ‘such an idiot’ could have broken through the perimeter and escaped the guards. There is no record or chronology of the tortures he went through, except for what happened inside and outside Block 1. Block 1 at Ebensee was divided up into the Schreibstube in Stube A and the sleeping quarters of the 160 Prominenten in Stube B. Among the Prominenten was the Luxemburger Robert St.,7 who watched through a crack in the wall into the office section where Riemer, assisted by the Blockführer Hans Bühner, tied the boy’s hands behind his back and then hanged him while they whipped him, with his feet just touching the floor. After that, for one hour, Veronesi was chased by Riemer’s dog Lord8 along the alleys close to Block 1, observed by the Prominenten who were all awake. The screams of the boy lived in the collective memory: ‘Pietà commandante! Pietà! Aiuto Mamma mia!’ Around midnight the cries stopped. The next morning his body was found lying behind the kitchen Block adjacent to Block 1. The information sent to the Veronesi family read as follows: ‘We inform you that your son Danilo Veronesi, sent to Germany as part of the work front, died as a result of injuries sustained during a terrorist attack by the Anglo-Americans.’9 A few conclusions can be drawn. The killing of Veronesi took place in May and not December, and had nothing to do with the Christmas celebration enshrined in the folklore created by Paul Tillard. The Lagerleiter responsible was Riemer and not Ganz, contrary again to established folklore. The testimony of the Spanish witness Bernal amounts to a classic mix of the personal experience remembered and the public version that emerged and prevailed, even over personal memory. Finally, Riemer received a promotion, from Obersturmführer to Hauptsturmführer, in the days that followed, before he lost the lot—his post, his commission and his freedom —as a result of the scandal that broke one week later. As for year’s end 1944, the SS

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broke with their custom of celebrating New Year’s Eve. An SS document which survived shows that hopes were now fading at the top level of the Nazi leadership: an order was issued cancelling the celebrations planned for 31 December 1944.10

7 A visit to Melk

Austria was never to know the kind of sustained bombing that Germany underwent, but in 1944 Allied air raids on selected Austrian targets, by USAAF and RAF bombers based in Italy, were considerably increased. Linz was the most natural target, for its Hermann Göring Works (Linz III). There the Allied raid of 25 July 1944 was so intensive that it destroyed not only most of the plant but also most of the morale of those prisoners who were left alive. The survivors were so shattered that they reportedly tore one another to pieces, and the attempt to form a resistance network in that Nebenlager was suspended for a long time afterwards.1 The Hauptlager itself never received more than a random bombing,2 but certain Nebenlager apart from Linz were also heavily attacked. Floridsdorf was seriously damaged on 8 July 1944.3 A raid on the Nibelungenwerke in St Valentin followed on 16 October, on which day even Salzburg was bombed. The oil refinery at Schwechat was attacked on 21 January 1945, followed by a raid on Ternberg on 13 March, and multiple raids on 16 March on the refineries at Schwechat and Floridsdorf as well as Wiener-Neustadt in general.4 The Nebenlager at Melk, Steyr and Gusen were not spared either, while Linz was bombed without respite, the last time on 25 April 1945. As a result of these raids, Juan de Diego, and he alone—the other two Lagerschreiber were never sent on such a mission—was dispatched first to Linz and later to Melk, Steyr and Gusen5 in order to restore order to the ledgers, because when a Nebenlager’s records were destroyed the SS depended entirely on the records maintained by de Diego in the Mutterlager. His assignment then was to determine the number and identity of the prisoners killed in the bombing and those left alive. Travelling in a Wehrmacht sidecar with an SS driver and an escort of four SS motorcyclists behind him, de Diego felt for all the world like a visiting head of state, were it not for his dress, which was his usual striped Drillich. On each trip he did his best to make confusion worse confounded, mislaying a paper here, a paper there, thus saving a prisoner a day or two of labour— and each day’s work he saved could be a month of life. The trip to Melk was especially noteworthy. The Allied air raid on that town on 8 July 1944 was more destructive to the prisoner population than any other in Austria —more than 500 died—and it was Bachmayer himself on that occasion, to de Diego’s total bewilderment, who drove the sidecar in which he rode. The visit also happened to coincide with the July Plot. Fear transformed the faces of the SS

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through the hours in which they believed the Führer dead. The effect on Lagerleiter Ludolf was particularly in evidence. Whether it was the Plot, or the disorder in his archives, or the presence of Bachmayer, Juan de Diego recalls the impact it all had on Ludolf, now reduced to such servility that he personally served not only Bachmayer but even de Diego, ‘as though the Lagerleiter were no better than a Bierkellermeister’. Meanwhile the orders from Ziereis were for Bachmayer and all SS on leave to report at once to the Mutterlager. This meant that de Diego, when his work at Melk was completed, had to return by train, stopping at St Valentin, since Mauthausen was not on the Linz-Vienna line. He was escorted by a Luftwaffe soldier who happened to speak Spanish, since he had been living in Mexico in 1939 and returned to Germany when war began. ‘¡Qué pendejo que he sido!’ he told de Diego in his Mexican idiom, in regretting his stupidity. At St Valentin a man seeing de Diego in his Drillich offered him some bread. The soldier said nothing, and de Diego took it. At St Valentin, their railway car was attached to the little locomotive that pulled it the few miles north to the big metal bridge across the Danube and to the peaceful little station on the other side, with its panel Mauthausen.6 What prisoner would not think at that moment of how the station looked when he first saw it from a train? What thoughts would not pervade his mind after breathing free air for any space of time and now re-entering Mauthausen’s mephitic maw?

8 An international committee forms

It was the proud boast of the Spanish organization that from the beginning of 1943 every single Spaniard entering Mauthausen could count upon its help.1 Mid-1943 saw the arrival of the first Spaniards arrested in France for resistance activities; the very first was a miner turned guerrillero by the name of Felipe Amable Martínez, who was sent to Ebensee, where he set to work organizing the resistance there.2 Such men brought a new language to Mauthausen: that of sabotage, ambush, derailment, but more than anything, of hope, survival, and liberation. Among the new arrivals arrested in the French Resistance were some very active members of the anarchist CNT. José Ester Borrás, for example, arrived at Mauthausen in the same contingent as the communists Josep Miret Musté and Luis Montero.3 While Miret was dispatched to Floridsdorf,4 Ester and Montero were both assigned in September 1943 to the internal Kommando attached to the SS armoury; this two-man Kommando was responsible for the hard cleaning work. Ester began to organize those Spaniards who, for ideological reasons, had refused to join the communist-led organization, while Montero, a captain in the Republican Army during the Civil War who had been described as ‘an indefatigable organizer and exemplary man of action’,5 became the soul of the Spanish military formation. With the arrival of the CNT guerrilleros, the old quarrels between Spanish communists and non-communists began to subside. Ester and Montero, representing their respective committees, worked together not simply in the armoury but in the secret organization, and a Spanish ‘committee of national union’ was formed in the spring of 1944. This committee consisted of two communists (Angel Sánchez and Fernando Fernández Lavín), two anarchists (Capdevilla and Ester), and two socialists or republicans whose names have not been recorded.6 On the same day that the Spanish national committee was formed, an international committee was also constituted: not without difficulty, for certain German communists considered the enterprise too risky—among them Franz Dahlem, a member of the Comintern Executive Committee, who was especially aware of the dangers.7 He had arrived in Mauthausen in March 1943 with the designation Rückkehr Unerwünscht, but instead of exterminating him the SS assigned him to the Baubüro Kommando. The SS policy of sparing the life, or delaying the execution, of many of its most celebrated prisoners (Dahlem, Ernst Thaelmann, Heinrich Rau, Jorge Semprún)8 has intrigued other survivors, who attribute the

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policy to the desire to hold them as hostages.9 The international committee had a pronounced communist predominance, and all its leaders who survived were to have important roles in their respective countries after the Liberation. At the time of its creation, the committee consisted of three Austrian communists (Josef Kohl, Hans Maršálek, and a certain Mayer) and one Czech (Artur London).10 The predominance of the Austrians was logical, since they were better equipped to make contact with the Austrian Resistance. As for London, after his arrest in Paris in August 194211 he had been sent, in September 1943, to the prison in Blois, then to the Neue Bremm punishment camp near Saarbrücken for a month, and on 26 March 1944, he arrived in Mauthausen.12 His arrival among so many Spanish communists and former members of the International Brigades— Dahlem had been a leading participant—must have seemed to him like a class reunion. The Spaniards now protected him by getting him the post of Blockschreiber in Block 6, which contained a large number of Spaniards. The international committee was no sooner formed when it fell into internal bickering. It was the Austrians and the Czechs who had taken the initiative in creating the international committee, and it was Dahlem who had prevented its formation through the winter of 1943–4. Dahlem was furthermore opposed to the inclusion of any Austrian on the basis that none had the necessary stature. Chauvinism also had its place: the German communists supported the Anschluss, and the Austrian communists opposed it. Dahlem opposed the idea of a structured committee and an organized and active resistance because he felt that a more limited objective would give the communist leaders a better chance to survive and lead in the struggles of the future. This policy of passivity and inaction was at first supported by the majority, but the opposition, led by the Spaniards and the International Brigaders, began to win ground. A further point of contention pitted Dahlem against London, who was in favour of opening up the organization to noncommunists; in this London had the support of the Spaniards and the International Brigaders, who remembered the Spanish Civil War and the need for unity.13 In the end it was they who prevailed, and it was Dahlem who was isolated, as the idea developed in the closing weeks either to take on the SS in a final antifascist action or to create the myth of such an action, rather than to allow history to say of them that they were liberated from the outside. The international committee proceeded to set up a highly ambitious— and partly impracticable—seven-point programme on the following basis: to complete the internal organization of each national section, with leadership and structure; to perfect the communist education of all militants; to work out a plan of international solidarity; to establish small combat units; to monitor Allied radio broadcasts and spread the news; to plan the escape of any militant threatened with execution (where an interval of time existed, and however slim the chance of escape); and to attempt, with the help of comrades in the Nebenlager, to make contact with sympathetic elements in the Austrian population.14 The work of radio monitoring was performed by Istvan Balogh, a Hungarian volunteer in the International Brigades and member of the Spanish Communist

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Party. Balogh had been assigned to the electrical workshop (Elektrikerkommando) in January 1941. His early attempts to monitor Allied broadcasts were unsatisfying, since the SS only left him free to do so during two or three short periods per week. He therefore decided to build his own set. But he faced the risk of betrayal by the prisoner in charge of the detail, an elderly Austrian Black named Franz-Joseph Steininger, who was said to be ready to sell information to anyone in exchange for tobacco. Every day Balogh sequestered some part or other from the workshop supplies, and by September 1941 the secret radio was in working order. The news he obtained was passed only to two Spaniards, Marcelo Rodríguez and Luis Gil, the former employed as a clockmaker and the latter as servant to the Lagerältester. It was just as well that the Allied broadcasts at that time were not made known to the prisoners in general, for the news, however mitigated by Allied propaganda, would have served only to demoralize the inmates, many of whom were already critically depressed. The triad was later joined by Razola, who worked in the disinfection Kommando, and through Razola the group entered the secret organization.15 By then the thirst for news had increased. Up until the Battle of Stalingrad, the SS beamed Berlin’s news bulletins to the loudspeakers installed in every Block. When the tide of battle turned, the news relays stopped. The prisoners could guess why. Dismay among the SS, increasing fear and remorse among the civilian population, none of it offered any comfort to the prisoners who remained at the mercy of a system which knew well enough how to take its revenge. Throughout the summer of 1944 the communist groups were busily engaged in persuading those noncommunists in each national collective who had not yet organized themselves, to do so. The French were probably the first to respond to this appeal, and at the request of three leaders of the French communist group (which now included Pierre Daix),16 Michel de Boüard established an executive committee representing a broad ideological range.17 As a result of the new collaboration, it was now possible to smuggle clothes out of the clothing store, linen from the laundry, food from the storehouse, and medicine from the SS infirmary. Several lives were thus saved.18 Between June and August 1944 the Austrian communists Gabler and Mayer were executed19 at the same time that London fell gravely ill. The fate of Gabler dealt a particularly heavy blow to the resistance, since he was much admired. London was placed in the Revier, where he stayed for months, escaping transfer to the gas chamber only through the protection given to him by Professor Podlaha and the other inmate-doctors.20 Meanwhile, Gabler, Mayer and London were replaced on the international committee by three new members: the Frenchman Octave Rabaté (who spoke Spanish), the Spaniard Manuel Razola, and the Czech Leopold Hoffmann. Liaison with the Slav groups, mainly Poles and Russians, was entrusted to Hoffmann, while Razola, who had long experience with other national groups, was made responsible for liaison with the other Latin groups, French, Belgian, and Italian.21 A few serious ideological conflicts apparently remained, in the Spanish group as in others, and Razola often visited Artur London to seek his political advice.22

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It may well have been with the help of Artur London that, in September 1944, the Spaniards formed the Frente nacional antifascista español. Juan de Diego calls it ‘a retroactive organization, and a piece of theatre; its leader, the communist Ronda, was a non-entity.’23 Its purpose was to give the impression of solidarity behind communist leadership, with every ideology expressing its trust in communist goodwill. Much was made of this Frente after the Liberation, but it was indeed a front, of the kind the communist parties would perfect a few years later.

9 Atrocities against Allied prisoners

In the midst of so much suffering, few acts of barbarism stood out. If they did, it was because the SS were changing the rules. We have seen that Mauthausen contained many thousands of Soviet prisoners of war, whose inclusion the SS would justify in terms of race. A group of these arrived from the Nebenlager at Melk on 21 September 1944, already famished to the bone. Before they were all hanged, on the night of 25– 6 September, they were immortalized in an SS photograph that survived and has been widely published. The photo shows a group of 30, standing at attention naked in freezing cold. Developing and printing the film in the usual way, Antonio García was startled to see that in this crowd of nameless faces, of men going to their death with no one anywhere to record it, was a man he instantly recognized: his compatriot, Lorenzo Rodrigo Barroso, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War and his comrade both in his CTE unit in France and in his POW camp in Kaisersteinbruch. He had been transferred from the Hauptlager to Melk, and had simply found himself in a group marked for death and stripped even of their Drilliche and their triangles of identification.1 The fate of Rodrigo Barroso was symbolic. The hatred on which Nazi Germany was founded, once clearly focused, had become ever more blind. As the Third Reich became more desperate, it began to treat certain prisoners of war from the Western Allies in the same way that it treated the Soviets, especially if their Allied prisoners were from elite units which were striking the hardest blows to Germany. In the same month of September, a month when Austria is at its peak of beauty and delight, an atrocity took place in Mauthausen to which the Spanish Lagerschreiber, Juan de Diego, was an important witness, his testimony later serving to close the case on some of the perpetrators. On the morning of 6 September 1944, 47 Allied agents attached to SOE, comprising thirty-nine Dutch, seven British, and one American,2 arrived at Mauthausen from prisons in Holland and France.3 All were officers, and all were young and athletic.4 They were lined up by the steps leading to the showers, surrounded by SS who included Ziereis, Bachmayer and Trum.5 For two hours, these three took the leading part in the reception, Bachmayer with his hound Lord, and Trum wielding a whip. De Diego noticed that Lord was trembling, either out of fear of his madman-master or out of eagerness to please him. Bachmayer searched in the group of prisoners for his first victim, then, to stimulate Lord even more, let loose a torrent of abuse. At times like these Bachmayer’s body shivered

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with excitement and rage, while gradually his voice lapsed into incoherence. Ziereis then ordered the prisoners to line up outside the Lagerschreibstube, on the other side of the Appellplatz, in order to be registered. All the while, thousands of prisoners were witness to the event, and some Prominenten were very close. Antonio García recalls an SS officer giving one of the Allied officers a cord, telling him to put it around his neck and hang himself. The Allied officer put his index finger to his temple, tapping it to imply insanity. None of the three Lagerschreiber knew English, so Pany proposed to Bachmayer that the interpreter’s job be given to his fellow Czech, Přemysl Dobiáš. Ziereis began his interrogation. He wanted to know the prisoners’ mission, while Dobiáš wanted to know their experiences in captivity. The prisoners gave their name, rank, and serial number, and nothing more. Ziereis asked them their profession. Those who refused to answer were beaten. Others told Dobiáš that they were regular officers. Seeing these officers reply to Dobiáš without receiving from Dobiáš the information he sought, and suspecting perhaps that the officers were speaking of their experiences in captivity, Ziereis let loose on his interpreter, striking Dobiáš across the head with his whip. More furious than ever, the Lagerführer ordered up the attendance of half-a-dozen inmate-barbers to give to each of the Allied agents, without soap, a ‘Himmlerstrasse haircut’, three centimetres wide. One of the barbers, finding the task impossible, threw the razor down and began using scissors. Ziereis lunged full-force at the barber, snatched his razor up, and showed him how to do it, leaving the head covered in blood and joining in the laughter of the SS around him. Meanwhile Bachmayer unleashed Lord on to the forearm of another Allied prisoner who began to lose consciousness; sensing the danger, and taking advantage of a moment of confusion, the others managed, through great effort, to pick him up and place him in the centre of their formation. The session ended only because Ziereis and Bachmayer felt fatigued and wanted to break for lunch. The Allied prisoners had not been registered in any book. Instead, Ziereis ordered Dr Karl Helferich, the German political prisoner now also employed in the Lagerschreibstube, to inscribe their numbers in marker’s ink on their chests and shoulders,6 while the Lagerschreiber were told to prepare their death certificates in advance. The commandant’s last order that morning was that the barber be sentenced to the Strafkompanie, for showing ‘insufficient energy’. In the afternoon, the entire group was ordered to the quarry, at the run, under the Kapo Pelzer, a German Green. A crowd of SS lined the summit of the famous steps, keeping away from the cliff edge. Some had even brought their wives: Ziereis had promised them an extravaganza. At the base of the steps stood SSUnterscharführer Johann Vinzent Gogl. Pelzer was given charge of adjusting their wooden trestles, lengthening the straps so that the rocks would weigh even more painfully on their backs. The Allied officers were ordered to pick up a rock, then mount the steps, then do so at a run. Six times in the course of the afternoon they climbed the staircase; each time the staircase took its toll. By evening only 25 were left alive. ‘They came through the main gate,’ Dobiáš recalls, ‘limping and bleeding,’ and were taken to the Bunker. The SS had taken the precaution of

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removing the two prisoners, Bargueño and Chacón, who worked there.7 But precisely because the Bunker served as a total-security prison for Germany’s hostages and special prisoners, there were witnesses to the scene that followed, and some of these witnesses survived, among them the son of Marshal Badoglio and the German communist Joseph Drexel.8 It was the NCOs of the Politische Abteilung, logically the most bestial of all the SS in Mauthausen, who were entrusted with the treatment of the Allied survivors. It was noted that in one of the two administration rooms, the yardstick used to measure the height of prisoners was used to beat the Allied agents senseless. Meanwhile, the SS had discovered that the bodies of the Allied agents whom they had already killed had been so mutilated that the registration numbers printed on their chests were no longer legible. Faced with this disgrace to good record-keeping, Bachmayer readily accepted the suggestion of Juan de Diego that the only way to identify the dead would be to identify the survivors. De Diego was thus sent, and for the only time, to the Bunker. He mounted the short flight of steps to the entrance, and found himself in front of the peep-hole of the iron door. Inside to the left was the wicket-gate, where he reported, and beyond that an iron-chain gate. Nothing he had yet seen quite prepared him for what he was about to see as he passed inside. In stench that was unbreathable, in heat that was ‘like opening an oven’, he found the Allied agents, crammed into cells designed for a single prisoner, no fewer than 12 in the first and 13 in the second. These were now ordered into the Bunker’s corridor, and a roll was called under the supervision of the Bunker’s supervisor, Josef Niedermayer. As the names of the surviving prisoners were called out, Niedermayer’s ears picked up the name of Niermeijer. The closeness of the prisoner’s name to his own sent him into rage; the standard treatment of blows and kicks followed until Niedermayer was satisfied that the prisoner had atoned for this desecration of his name. Juan de Diego completed his mission, renewing the registration numbers on the chests of the 25 survivors with marker’s ink, then left the Bunker, his mind riveted on the mutilation he had seen. ‘I carried it with me into the night, the sickening smell, the sight of the pools of blood that formed a mosaic on the floor of the corridor, still with me as I walked back under the moon.’9 What followed that night in the Bunker has been recorded by the eyewitness Joseph Drexel. A group of Scharführer had invited a number of ladies to the Bunker to take part in a drunken orgy. At a certain moment the sergeants opened the celldoors. The prisoners were again told to line up, holding the cans containing their excrement, along each side of the corridor. Under the blows and shoves, the prisoners spilt the contents on the ground. They were then ordered to put the excrement back into the cans, without using their hands. The disgust felt by the Allied prisoners, reported Drexel, was greater than their fear of the blows. Forced to use their vests, they were then prevented from washing their clothes. All the while, the scene afforded the women guests ‘an inexhaustible source of entertainment: doubled up in merriment, they would slap their thighs with glee’.10 But there was more. That morning on the quarry steps the show’s final act began. Not one of the officers had received any food or water from the moment he arrived.

ATROCITIES AGAINST ALLIED PRISONERS 153

This time, as the prisoners neared the camp’s perimeter, all raced for the barbed wire. Like a conductor beckoning to the trumpet section of an orchestra, Ziereis signalled to the machine-guns in the towers, whose rapid staccato brought the carnival to an end. But that evening, as the other prisoners returned to the fortress, having witnessed the scene on the steps, thousands of wooden clogs beat a rhythm of protest in honour of the Allied dead.11 Once again, the role of the Spanish Lagerschreiber was crucial to the preservation of the evidence. For reasons unknown, the names of the 47 Allied officers were not entered and counter-signed in the Todesmeldung. Instead, some days later, some unranked SS were ordered to the Lagerschreibstube and told to type up a report listing the Allied officers and accusing them of having staged a rebellion. The carbon paper they used happened to be new. Juan de Diego waited for his chance, retrieved the carbon, held it against a mirror while he copied it, and hid the copy.12 Exactly two days after the last of these Allied officers in Mauthausen were murdered, a similar fate befell 16 British and French special agents who were among a group of 43 who had arrived in Buchenwald on 17 August 1944. Housed in Block 17, this group was hanged in the crematorium on 9 September. Another 20 of the group were shot on 5 October.13 In January 1945, 15 members of an Allied military mission that had been parachuted into Slovakia were sent to Mauthausen and executed. The two commandants, Ziereis and Pister, had undoubtedly received identical orders to treat the Allied prisoners in this way, and Adolf Zutter, who served as adjutant to Zeireis, admitted as much when taken prisoner by the Americans. ‘Some eight or ten days after the arrival of the Allied agents in Mauthausen,’ he declared under oath, ‘the executive order arrived in the form of a radio message or teleprint. Ziereis came to me in the orderly room and said: “Kaltenbrunner has approved their execution.” The order was classified secret and bore his signature. I passed it on to Oberscharführer Niedermayer in the Bunker, who at once shot the lot of them and handed their belongings over to me.’14

10 The Resistance forms a military branch

In the same month of September 1944, the international committee, as if inspired by the massacre of the Allied officers, established a military branch, responsible for the organization of combat groups and known by the acronym AMI, in its French version the Appareil militaire international. The Spanish group, which already had its own military organization headed by regular officers such as Luis Montero,1 at once offered its services. A distinguished Italian survivor writes that no one at the time knew who the organizers were: ‘Only after the Liberation did we learn that it was the Spaniards who were at the head of it. To these Spaniards all the survivors of Mauthausen owed their lives. The SS knew there was such an organization, and they did everything they could to uncover it, but they failed.’2 We can safely ignore the claims of the communists, who choose to overlook the extreme fatigue under which the prisoners were operating, when they say that the AMI developed into a major organization, with squads, platoons, companies, and battalions grouped into a brigade of some 4000–5000 men. As Sir Robert Sheppard points out, even though he was transferred to Dachau in 1943, there were surely never that many men in Mauthausen fit enough to take part.3 It is nevertheless reasonable to believe that each national unit had its distinct and precise assignments. Very careful training was given in gauging the distance to certain objectives such as sentry-boxes and watch-towers and the precise time required to reach them. Studies were made of variations in visibility and of areas safe from the SS arc of fire. All the time the national committees persevered in stealing and concealing knives, axes, picks, and whatever else could serve as a weapon on the day of reckoning.4 Occasionally they did better: at least one pistol was stolen from the SS armoury by a Spaniard working in that Kommando,5 and other Spaniards, employed in the garage Kommando, had made a duplicate key to a locker which they knew contained weapons and ammunition.6 Their secret weapon was the fire extinguisher with the brand name Minimax. It was discovered that the foam it ejected had a range of six metres, and that anyone hit four-square in the face would be blinded. The weapon had the further advantage that it made no noise. A rehearsal was arranged: Block leaders found their way during evening soup to the wall that separated the quarantine Blocks from the rest, which was the only spot in the camp not in clear view of the SS watch-towers. There they were shown how the extinguisher could be dismantled from its casing and how it could be fired.7 On the

THE RESISTANCE FORMS A MILITARY BRANCH 155

vital matter of security, no one apart from the committee members could identify more than his immediate superior and his immediate subordinate.8 To overcome the problem posed by the diversity of languages, it was agreed that the Soviet commander, Major Andreï Pirogov, would be responsible also for the Germans, Czechs, Yugoslavs, and Austrians. Pirogov, a career officer also known as Vorogov, had entered Mauthausen on 25 October 1944 in a group of 100 prisoners transferred from Sachsenhausen for disciplinary reasons. They were thus immediately placed in the Strafkompanie, where death from exhaustion was certain. Pirogov, however, had been able to get himself transferred, in January 1945, to the Sanitätslager, where he remained right up to the day (5 May) that the camp was liberated. It was also agreed, in the new arrangement, that the Spanish commander, now Fernández Lavín,9 would take charge of the French, Belgians, Italians—and the Poles, who clearly objected to being placed under a Soviet.10 Since the Spanish unit was the largest and the best of the national units, when the decision was taken to create an overall command it went to the same Spaniard Fernández Lavín. But Lavín had no military expertise,11 and he too was replaced (in early 1945) by Miguel Malle, a member of the PCE.12 His staff consisted of a German, an Austrian, a Czech, and a Frenchman.13 But the dominant figure seems to have been the Soviet major Pirogov. The Spanish commander maintained his liaison with the Soviet through another officer who spoke Spanish,14 and the official AMI report presented on 16 May 1945 before an assembly of Spanish survivors describes the AMI command as a Spanish-Soviet duumvirate.15 On 28 February 1945, the international committee was reinforced by the inclusion of several new members. Joining Kohl, Maršálek, Rabaté, Razola, and Hoffmann were the German Franz Dahlem, the Soviet Andreï Pirogov, the Italian communist Giuliano Pajetta, the Polish socialist Jozef Cyrankiewicz and the Austrian communist Dr Heinrich Dürmayer—the last two having arrived in Mauthausen the previous month as evacuees from Auschwitz.16 The survival of the Polish red-triangle Cyrankiewicz shows the importance of the resistance organization even inside the Krankenlager, which of course contained an ever-growing number of sick. The Czech red-triangle Kazik Rusinek was Krankenlagerschreiber II, and the Czech Přemysl Dobiáš was at that time Blockschreiber of its Block 3. Cyrankiewicz entered the hospital not because he was sick but because his life was in imminent danger. Rusinek told Dobiáš, to whose Block he was sent, that Cyrankiewicz was a man whose survival was of utmost importance. Dobiáš carried out his task, but in the summer of 1944 it was Dobiáš who was in danger. Dobiáš was a witness to too much that had been performed by Kleingünter in the Revier, and it was Rusinek who first saw the danger. Convinced that Dobiáš would not be allowed to survive, Rusinek arranged his transfer to the post of interpreter in the Lagerschreibstube, as assistant to Maršálek. In the ever-shrinking sphere of the KZ universe, Mauthausen Hauptlager and two of its Nebenlager, Gusen and Ebensee, were to be the final repositories of the evacuated survivors. Unlike Gusen, where nothing of consequence succeeded,17 Ebensee matched the Mutterlager in organizing a resistance network, but one factor

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was clearly in its favour: the fanaticized SS that were to be found in the Hauptlager and Gusen (and elsewhere) were in a minority in Ebensee,18 and breaking out of the camp was certainly easier—witness the escape of Danilo Veronesi in May 1944. In August of that year, most of the SS guards were replaced by Wehrmacht personnel, and a whole new opportunity developed. Ebensee was similar to Mauthausen Hauptlager in size, since it also consisted of 20 Blocks, and in the fact that certain of its prisoners would not only organize a Resistance network but also record and preserve the secrets of the camp. Among these, as we have seen, was the Czech political prisoner Drahomir Barta, whose detailed account of the Resistance at Ebensee is rightly regarded as a classic. Nevertheless, the origins of the Ebensee Resistance have been overlooked for one reason or another, and it is an Italian survivor of Ebensee, Italo Tibaldi, who fills in the gap. Tibaldi was only 16-years-old when he arrived at Ebensee on 28 January 1944. It was a Briton, Tibaldi says, who was the first to set out to organize a Resistance, and he had the distinction of being the only Briton in the camp. Known only by his first name of Reginald, he had been born in Egypt and educated in England and France. After joining the SOE he was parachuted into German-occupied Italy to make contact with the Partigiani. Arrested and sent to Ebensee, he befriended Marcel Gazelle, a French industrialist who had both financed and served in the French Resistance before falling into German hands. These two approached a third prisoner, the Luxemburger Albert Schockweiller, who worked as a clerk in Ebensee’s Schreibstube. Together they sought further contacts and especially a trustworthy interpreter, and this they found in the person of Hrvoje Macanovic, a former official in the Yugoslav Foreign Ministry who spoke seven languages and was serving as interpreter for the SS. Reginald and Macanovic then made contact with José Navarro, a railwayman and union leader from Alicante who had become the leader of the Spanish group. Despite the gravest difficulties, the group expanded their ties to the Poles, the Italians and the Soviets. At the same time, Navarro, who was in contact with Spaniards working in the mess, barracks and armoury of the SS, made the acquisition of weapons their top priority.19 In May 1944, as we have seen, Ebensee’s commandant Riemer was disgraced and replaced by the no less fiendish Ganz. In the same month, the original Resistance triumvirate faded from sight, while the Czech Barta, the Yugoslav Macanovic and the Frenchman Jean Laffitte founded an international committee. In January 1945, the triumvirate saw the need to expand the committee. Among those it now included was Major Vladimir Sokolov (‘Kostev’), who was entrusted with military preparations, the Spaniard Felipe Amable Martínez, and the German political prisoner Ernst Lörcher, from Munich, who was Kapo of the disinfection Kommando. When another Spaniard, Augusto Hávez, arrived in mid-April 1945 as an evacuee from Melk, Laffitte, who had known him well in France, gave him his place on the committee. That was the start of problems. Hávez wanted the committee to be exclusively communist. The Spaniards and the Poles protested, as did Barta and Macanovic, and Hávez had to comply.20

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The nucleus of the Resistance at Ebensee remained in its Lagerschreibstube, where Barta was assisted, as Lagerschreiber II, by the Luxemburger Camille Sholtes. Only the strongest nerves could hold up whenever Ganz entered the office. Barta’s diary records that on 22 January 1945, the Blockschreiber of Block 10 lost his privileged post when he forbade the Kapos to strike the prisoners while at work; the very notion caused Ganz to roar with laughter. On the other hand, an enormous improvement came about at the top level of the prisoners’ chain of authority. Magnus Keller (‘King Kong’) was now so concerned about the impending defeat of Nazi Germany and the implications it held for him that, in March 1945, he requested, and obtained, a transfer to the Nebenlager in Gunskirchen. His replacement as Lagerältester went to Konrad (‘Kuno’) Wegner, a German socialdemocrat who had been imprisoned for more than 13 years, the entire length of the Hitler regime. Until now he had served as Kapo of the postal service, and now, for the six weeks that remained of Ebensee, he inherited Keller’s luxury accommodation: his own room and a radio. From that time on, every evening the Resistance committee members found their way to his room to obtain the news.21 The committee clearly had more freedom to meet than did its counterpart in the Hauptlager, but special care still had to be taken against those spying for the SS. Meetings were held on Sunday, the only possible day, in Block 18, in the office of the Blockschreiber Alois Drabek, and lasted up to half a day, with the Yugoslavs providing the ever-watchful lookouts. Discussion centred on the question of when to pass to action, given the now catastrophic situation in the camp. The positivists faced a constant refrain from those who saw nothing but the certainty of imminent death. It was the representative of Block 18, with support from those of Block 15 and Block 8, who argued for action whatever the consequences. The combat groups placed under Sokolov are estimated at 200, comprising Russians, Yugoslavs, Czechs, Spaniards, Belgians and French. The basic weapons that they succeeded in hiding were axes, pickaxes, and knives, but certain prisoners now made contact with one or two sympa thetic members among the guards, which opened up better possibilities. The chronology is unclear, but the Spaniards working as boilermen in the SS barracks found themselves in contact with two veterans of Rommel’s Afrikakorps who were in touch with the Austrian Resistance, while Laffitte made contact with Josef (‘Jupp’) Poltrum, a Feldwebel in the Luftwaffe similarly connected with the Austrian Resistance; eight other Wehrmacht men known to Poltrum were ready to help, and indeed the overture to collaboration came from the guards. All four of the principal collaborators were Austrian. Apart from Poltrum, who came from the local district, they consisted of Hauptmann Alfred Payrleitner, who was known as the ‘Afrikaner’, presumably for his Afrikakorps experience, Dr Rudolf Pekar, in charge of the factory Revier, and the Viennese socialist Josef Vogel, a civilian worker. Payrleitner had been in command of the replacement guards since they first arrived in August 1944, and he and Poltrum together worked out a way to bring into the camp a very small supply of weapons and ammunition, which amounted to no more than seven revolvers and a dozen grenades. Poltrum himself brought the matériel to the exterior of the camp in empty coffee boxes, in

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February 1945, and Vogel took the responsibility of carrying the arms into the camp. The prisoners to whom the arms were delivered were the Spaniard Víctor Queto, who worked in the postal service and who hid the weapons under the floorboards; and the Luxemburger Camille Scholtes, who was Barta’s assistant in the administrative office. The population of Ebensee knew that they remained at the mercy of Ganz and the SS. But to know that an opposition existed in the world, that they were not alone, and that they had friends even among those who encircled them was a thought of supreme comfort.

11 Reds and Blues replace the Greens and Blacks

What gave the prisoners a new chance was the situation facing Nazi Germany, especially in the east. From the beginning of 1943, with the surrender of Paulus at Stalingrad, the Wehrmacht faced a steadily increasing need for men, and the whole German economy had a similar need for skilled labour. Many German Greens and Blacks accepted the offer to serve in the Wehrmacht,1 and some Green Kapos were transferred in late 1944 to other camps where the crimes they had committed in Mauthausen were unknown.2 But the SS had another reason for removing the old Kapos, and especially the old Lagerschreiber: if they survived they could testify to the crimes committed.3 This explains the secret order, which Ziereis divulged on his death-bed, calling for the liquidation of the current crematorium Kommando every three weeks.4 It also explains in part the dismissal and subsequent execution of the Lagerschreiber I himself. Josef Leitzinger was cordially hated by his fellow-prisoners. He beat everyone, and he once hit his fellow-clerk Juan de Diego. The little Spaniard waited his moment, and when Leitzinger was about to hit him again de Diego drove his elbow into the Austrian’s mid-section with all his force. Leitzinger did not trouble de Diego again, but the Spaniards and the Reds were determined to oust him, and since Leitzinger was a drug addict they knew how to trap him. With the help of Professor Podlaha, who obtained the wherewithal, Leitzinger was given a massive dose and was then found by Bachmayer, on 12 March 1944, in a total daze. The Schutzhaftlagerführer promptly removed him from his post—certainly not because he was a brutal sadist—and sent him to Gusen.5 According to the most authoritative source we have,6 Leitzinger was shot in Gusen on 16 January 1945 ‘while attempting to escape’. This account is neverthless refuted by Manuel García, who enjoys the authority of 20 years as custodian of Mauthausen’s post-war museum. According to Manuel García, who was also at Gusen at the time, Leitzinger was not known as a drug addict but he was known as a homosexual, and at Gusen he was murdered by another Lagerschreiber, a certain Kruska, who slit his throat with a razor. Leitzinger had entered into a homosexual relationship with his Blockältester, and Kruska killed him out of jealousy, whereupon the Blockältester killed him in revenge.7 With the removal of Leitzinger and the departure of so many Green and Black Kapos, the whole of Mauthausen’s internal structure began to move into the control of the Reds. The Czech Kuneš Pany now moved up into the position of

160 REDS AND BLUES REPLACE THE GREENS AND BLACKS

Lagerschreiber I, the Austrian Hans Maršálek became Lagerschreiber II, and Juan de Diego remained as Lagerschreiber III. Bachmayer had by this time developed a curious respect for the Spaniard: he actually called him Johann, while he called Pany and Maršálek Erste and Zweite Lagerschreiber.8 The Schreibstube now became the centre of resistance, but these clerks had plenty to fear, not only that what had happened to Leitzinger could happen to them, but also that the Greens could still recover their control.9 As a result of the great increase in the death rate, it was decided in early 1944 to appoint four auxiliary clerks (Hilfsschreiber). This offered the chance of survival, as we have seen, to the Czech Přemysl Dobiáš, who with his compatriot Jan Pstross was assigned to assist Maršálek. A new political game was now being played, as the communists tried to oust the non-communist de Diego and replace him by the communist Pstross. The Spaniard resisted and the manoeuvre failed.10 Meanwhile, in the now more congested Schreibstube, Dobiáš had a desk between Maršálek and de Diego, who was now seated facing the door, with a view through the window to his left of whatever was happening on the Appellplatz, and the entrance to the gas chamber.11 The immediate result was that in Mauthausen and in certain of its Nebenlager, the Spaniards became the predominant group in the organization of the prisoners. The Spaniards, it was said, were offered freedom in exchange for service in the Wehrmacht, the entire group being drawn up in the Appellplatz to hear the call from Ziereis for volunteers to step forward from the ranks; not a single Spaniard moved.12 At the same time the continuous Allied bombing disrupted the work in the quarry and the adjacent factories, with the result that camp discipline was relaxed. Those SS sent to the eastern front were replaced by less fanatical elements, including some older Austrians; as the Nazi situation deteriorated further, these SS in turn were replaced, early in 1945, by Luftwaffe troops, anti-aircraft crews, and the Volkssturm. The SS command was also aware of the homogeneity, solidarity, and organizational discipline of the Spanish group, to the extent that it tolerated towards the end what would never have been tolerated at an earlier time. As for the final stage that now approached, the Spaniards especially let it be known that they were on guard, prepared for the eventuality of a total extermination, and determined not to submit without a fight to the death.13 While certain factors were thus working to the advantage of the prisoners, others reduced even further their chances of survival. On 7 May 1944, Himmler wrote a terse four-line message, whose only recipients were Kaltenbrunner and Pohl, and which somehow survived destruction at the end. It ran: ‘For reasons of security, I forbid the release of any prisoner from KL-Mauthausen for the duration of the war.’14 After the failure of the assassination attempt on Hitler on 20 July, there was many a hint from the SS at Mauthausen as elsewhere that if Nazi Germany were to lose the war there would be no prisoner in Nazi hands who would live to celebrate it.15 The secret organization had worked hard to infiltrate its agents into some key areas of the camp. Ramón Bargueño, for example, in his post in the Bunker, had a variety of duties which allowed him to move around; while he made the beds and

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cleaned the boots of the SS, he was also responsible for taking meals to the SS on duty in the Bunker and to the occasional members of the SS who were themselves confined there as punishment for indiscipline.16 The Catalan communist leader Tarragó succeeded, with the help of Boix, in getting himself assigned in early 1944 to the NCO’s mess (Unterführerheim). Tarragó was in contact with the barber Manuel Azaustre, who was responsible for cleaning the Kommandantur.17 Azaustre claims to have heard Ziereis threaten to kill the prisoners en masse at the moment the Allies approached the camp. The international committee was thus informed, and the AMI was alerted.18 Mariano Constante, as orderly to Ziereis’ chief clerk, was also in a good eavesdropping position, but nothing that this Spaniard writes or tells can be taken at face value. Constante, the mostly widely read of all Spanish chroniclers of Mauthausen, remains, as Juan de Diego puts it, ‘frantic to be acclaimed a hero’, and his account of how he was paralysed by being hanged at the main gate is of the same shredded cloth as his account of how his hand was crushed by ‘La Niña’.19 What is of interest is his claim that his agony at the gate was the result of his being caught by SS-Unterscharführer Hans Bruckner while he was taking notes from an old copy of Völkischer Beobachter.20 Antonio García scoffs at the idea that it was ever a crime for a prisoner to be caught reading a German newspaper. For the Prominenten in Block 2, reports García, there were German newspapers galore. ‘It was in no way forbidden to read them. Why should it be? There was nothing in them but propaganda.’21 But there was indeed something else. As Francesc Comellas points out, whether or not, after El Alamein and Stalingrad, the Nazi journals included maps, they certainly included names of places, and these journals, as long as they were made available to the Prominenten, enabled the prisoners to learn where the battles were being fought and how the Germans were in retreat.22

12 Incidents in the photo lab

Meanwhile in the Erkennungsdienst, the work that was inestimable to the cause of justice went on each day, as Antonio García continued to make his sixth print of the photos he selected. Some changes in personnel had taken place. Hans, the Austrian socialist Kapo, had won his release in the winter of 1942–3, presumably by volunteering for the Wehrmacht. He was replaced by another Hans, this one a German Green who told García he had killed his wife. He was not a photographer, and the replacement of a Red by a Green was at variance with the current trend of replacing Greens by Reds, but the new Hans did nothing to upset the situation in the photo lab. When the German Hans also volunteered to serve (in the WaffenSS), Gralinski was selected to replace him as Kapo. Another Spaniard, José Cereceda, also came in towards the end as an assistant. All those working in the little team were very much aware of the great privileges they enjoyed: they shared the toilet that Ricken used, which being inside the darkroom required a certain cooperation, and at 6.30 p.m., at the end of each working day, they were entitled to take a shower in the disinfection centre next door. They also had a direct view of the execution site in the alley outside; only the joiners’ workshop (Schreinerei) and perhaps the locksmiths’ workshop (Schlosserei) to the north were closer. But these Kommandos returned to the fortress for lunch (and the time-consuming roll-call), while the Erkennungsdienst Kommando had their lunch inside the photo lab. It was at that time, between noon and 2 p.m., that the executions were carried out, and towards the end they took place daily. A few minutes before each session began, an SS officer would arrive to give the order Verdunkeln. The black-out blinds used for air-raid alerts were then lowered, but they contained small holes through which the prisoners could observe the scene, and the Kapo voiced no objection. García rarely even peeked, but Boix watched regularly, and each time gave vent to a gallows humour. On 20 April 1944, the SS celebrated Hitler’s 55th birthday by executing 48 men and four women. As always, the men were shot naked and the women dressed. Since each prisoner was shot individually, the killing went on until 5 p.m. Ricken, who had returned from lunch, was therefore present, but did not order the prisoners to move away from the curtain. He was, in fact, lost in his own inner torment. Covering his face in his hands, groaning ‘O weh!’, he lowered his head as low as he could, then sprang up, snatched his cap, and shot out of the Erkennungsdienst like an arrow, not to return until the following day. But if Ricken

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could not bear the sound and sight of it, Boix exulted in it. When the other prisoners remonstrated, Boix shouted that he was in no mood to weep. ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘no doubt they’re all a bunch of bandits.’ At the end of the day everybody in the camp knew that the victims were all Yugoslav partisans. When García told this to Boix, Boix shot back with ‘Go to hell!’1 The malice which Boix bore toward Grabowski found its ultimate satisfaction in November 1944 when Schulz, to celebrate his own birthday, marched into the photo lab to tell Grabowski, in front of García, that he had decided to release him: he could walk out of the camp a free man, provided only that he agree to be emasculated first. Even among the misfits that made up the SS leadership, Schulz was showing signs of mental unbalance. If a reason can be found to explain this outrageous proposal, it is probably that Schulz had heard about Grabowski’s wife in Vienna. Schulz was a notorious woman-chaser, as we have seen, and Grabowski, who was now 56-years-old, was constantly telling everybody about his marriage to a beautiful ballerina in the Vienna Opera, decades younger than himself. ‘What do you say to the offer?’ asked Schulz, still in front of García. ‘I’d like to think about it,’ replied Grabowski. ‘You can’t think about it!’ roared Schulz. Grabowski then agreed: his manhood for his freedom. Later that day a male prisoner-nurse arrived from the Revier, calling out Grabowski’s number as he approached. Grabowski called back through the window that he had thought it over and now refused. The nurse replied that he had one minute, after which the SS would collect him. Grabowski left with the nurse, and the operation was performed—not by Professor Podlaha’s team but by the SS doctors, which explains why so few prisoners learnt of the matter. After resting in the Revier, Grabowski was taken to the brothel to see what the prostitutes could do to excite him.2 Grabowski then reported to Schulz, who examined the evidence of the operation. Satisfied with what he saw, Schulz then told him to collect civilian clothes from the Effektenkammer. Grabowski was then seen leaving the camp in his civilian clothes, accompanied by an SS guard, who later spoke of what he witnessed. As they descended the hill on the way to Mauthausen village and its station, Grabowski stopped at the bank of the Danube and in front of the guard waded into the river, pouring the water over his head and crying ‘Meine schöne Donau!’ Grabowski never reached Vienna, as his wife attested. All that was ever known was what the guard reported on his return to the Lager, to the effect that Grabowski had waded into the Danube. In Antonio García’s opinion, Grabowski felt so humiliated he had lost the desire to return to his wife.3 The work of Ricken in the Erkennungsdienst was winding down, and Grabowski did not need to be replaced. So great were the waves of incoming prisoners evacuated from the camps in the east that the registration photographs were dispensed with. As for visiting dignitaries, there were no more, so that by the end of 1944 Ricken had virtually stopped taking photographs. At the same time he was more nonchalant than ever about the rules. He would often stay in his office in the evening and listen to the BBC.4 Even more astonishing, he took the enormous risk, towards the end of the war, of admitting it to García. García never returned the favour of confiding in Ricken that he held a secret photo collection, and remains

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convinced that even Ricken would have brought misery on his head if he had known. But as for Ricken listening to the BBC, it was no secret to García. Ricken would leave his office door unlocked and his radio, though switched off, was tuned to the BBC. Whenever he and Schinlauer went out to lunch, which they took from 12 to 2 p.m., the prisoners were on their own. At 1 p.m. García and others would enter his office, turn on the radio, and listen to the BBC news bulletin in French. In February 1945 García fell sick. The precious prints, some 200 in number, for which all this time he had risked his life to save were hidden in the filing cabinet behind the Kapo’s desk in which all the negatives were stored. No one knew the secret except García and Boix, who was responsible for filing the negatives. García was taken to the Revier, from which few prisoners emerged alive. Curiously enough, the International Red Cross had already informed his family that he was dead: in an undated letter which García still retains, the Duke of Hernani, an official of the CICR, reported that, according to the British Red Cross, García had died in Mauthausen in 1942. It now looked as if the report was merely premature. For 38 days he lay at death’s door. It may well have been the longest period that any prisoner had been allowed to stay in the Revier prior to being dispatched to the gas chamber, but the SS obviously considered him important and his life was saved by Professor Podlaha. It was there, in the Revier’s Block 5, that García noticed his fellowcountryman Climent, his friend and colleague from the Politische Abteilung, being carried in barely conscious, his face bathed in blood, his nose broken, his lips torn, his teeth smashed. Ramón, the Catalan who headed the prisoner services in the Block, explained to García what had happened. Boix had attacked Climent in their barracks in Block 2, striking him on the head with a wooden plank while his face was turned, and then, while Climent lay motionless on the floor, continuing to strike him, as a Kapo would in beating a prisoner to death. Climent was saved only by the instant intervention of the other Prominenten, especially the 15 other Spaniards housed in Stube A, but so badly was Climent disfigured that the prisonerattendants in the Revier had to apply a mask to reconstruct his face. The Prominenten who came to visit Climent in the Revier visited García too, and confirmed Ramón’s account. For a time not one of the Spaniards in Block 2 would speak to Boix, who, predictably, never came to the Revier to visit either Climent or García. García had the comfort of a visit by the Party leader Razola, who told him how much the Party appreciated his secret work in the photo lab. At that very moment, García was losing all he had striven to save. In late March 1945 García was still anything but well, but the prisoner-doctors advised him to leave because of the danger of the Revier being liquidated. García therefore left, barely able to walk: ‘I was as sick as when I entered.’ He made his way to the Erkennungsdienst, moved straight to the filing cabinet,…and found the photos gone! Boix was now the Kapo. As soon as the two men were alone, García asked Boix where the photos were. With a mocking smile Boix replied: ‘Now you’ve woken up. They’re in the hands of the Party. Don’t think you’ll get anything out of me (Si me pinchan no me sacan sangre).’ García, gentle by nature, turned cold in fury. ‘Never,’ he wrote later, ‘had I felt such a sense of betrayal. If my health had allowed

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it, I would have flown at him. Instead, I had to wait my moment.’ That moment may never have come. Mauthausen was now experiencing many air-raid alerts, and at such times all prisoners in the Kommandos outside the fortress had to run to the fortress at full speed. The distance from the Erkennungsdienst to the main gate was 400 metres. Boix would run off like a hare, without any thought for the crippled García, who faced the danger that any laggard would be machine-gunned from the watch-tower on the northern corner. It was the two Poles who stayed to help him, and these three were always the last to reach the safety of the fortress gates. Nevertheless, the day came when García and Boix were alone in the Erkennungsdienst, Ricken and Schinlauer having gone out to lunch and none of the other prisoner-assistants being present. ‘I locked the door,’ García recalls. ‘Boix was not expecting it, and betrayed his fright. My idea was to put the key in my pocket, but in the heat of the moment I left it in the lock. In retrospect it saved my life, or both our lives, since the fight would have gone on to the end. I told myself, now at last, either I kill him, or he kills me. We were evenly matched: he had the advantage in health and strength and youth, and I in stomach for the fight.’ But Boix made no attempt to defend himself. His purpose was only to escape. He ran from one wall to the other like a frightened chicken, his back always turned, his arms covering his head and face, while García rained his blows upon him. The windows were small and high, offering Boix no escape. Twice he reached the door, and twice García pulled him away, beating him all the while about the head. The third time he reached the door he managed to turn the key, and the door flew open under the weight of their fellow-prisoners on the outside who now rushed in to separate the two. In the course of the fight García had broken the metacarpus of his hand, either on the lock or on Boix’s head, and it was this injury that ended the fight and allowed Boix to get away. Boix went straight to the Party leaders, but he also treacherously reported the injury to Bachmayer, which again placed García’s life at risk. His first summons was from the Party. García reported loyally to Tarragó, who ordered him to follow him into an alley where Boix was waiting with Pagès. ‘You have just struck a comrade,’ Pagès told him, ‘and that is a very serious matter.’ García replied by informing Pagès of Boix’s reputation as a tattletale, and the danger that it posed to the Party. Pagès turned to Boix and asked him if it was true. To the astonishment of García, who concluded that Boix’s head could not be working, Boix replied, ‘Yes’. Pagès jumped on Boix. ‘If this happens again,’ he said, ‘I shall expel you from the Party.’ In fact, as we shall see, everything on Boix’s record, including his physical assault on Climent, was to be totally forgotten by the Party, the moment it decided on his canonization. García, too, drew a conclusion: ‘No longer, never again would I have that blind faith in the Party or its members. I came out of this like a scalded cat.’5 That still left García’s life at stake following the tale told by Boix to Bachmayer. ‘Summoned by Bachmayer,’ wrote García, in these unpublished memoirs. ‘I could not predict the outcome. The “bloody gypsy” would kill a prisoner for less cause than that. But Bachmayer oddly dropped the matter, and I was able to get my hand treated by Ramón, my fellow-Spaniard who had helped to save my life in the

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Revier. Even so, I told him that I had tripped and fallen. It was safer than the truth, even to a friend.’6 It was as if García had a faint understanding that his personal survival counted, not for his own sake, but for the sake of history and truth.

13 The Soviet break-out from the Death Block

If an escape from an Aussenkommando in the mountains was theoretically possible, an escape from the Hauptlager was a different story, and we have seen that one-man or small-scale attempts seemed doomed to failure. The revolt of Block 20, however, on the night of 2–3 February 1945, showed that large-scale concerted action could succeed, even against a machine as alert and ruthless as the SS. The revolt led to the only mass break-out ever known at Mauthausen Mutterlager, and one of only three ever known in the KZ universe. Of the other two, one was at Sobibor (on 14 October 1943) and the other, as we shall see, was launched from a Mauthausen Nebenlager. The exploit of 2–3 February nevertheless remains a model for all time. The plan was simplicity itself. If enough men accepted the principle that the objective be pursued regardless of how many died, some prisoner or other would finish up with his two thumbs pressing on some Nazi’s gurgling windpipe. Block 20 (the Death Block) was administered as an annex to the Bunker, hence by Schulz in the Politische Abteilung. It was isolated from the rest of the camp by a granite wall, topped by an electrified fence of the standard 380 volts, with three watchtowers on the two walls to the east and south that offered (if that is the right term) the chance of escape. From April 1944 it was reserved for Soviet officers and political commissars, especially those who had escaped from the prisoner of war camps, and for certain K prisoners.1 Since it was now normal for the Germans to shoot prisoners of war who escaped and always normal for the SS to execute K prisoners on arrival, the presence of 4300 such prisoners in Mauthausen’s Block 20 has only one explanation: it was intended that they slowly starve to death. The man responsible for Block 20, Josef Niedermayer, admitted as much at his trial in Dachau: ‘The prisoners were to die slowly, from starvation or disease. The daily food ration consisted of half a litre of so-called soup, an eighth or a sixteenth of a kilo of bread, which frequently I didn’t distribute, and a thin slice of cheese, salami, or margarine.’ For good measure, the eight Green Kapos responsible for Block 20 would empty the dishes into wash-basins, forcing the prisoners to lap up the food with their hands. They were also systematically exhausted by being forced into the squatting position with their hands behind their heads, then marched like geese for up to three kilometres at a time. As a result, of the 4300 prisoners interned there in April 1944, only 1300 were still alive in November, and only 800 by January 1945.2 They all slept on the ground, those still fit in Stube A, the sick in Stube B.

168 THE SOVIET BREAK-OUT FROM THE DEATH BLOCK

‘None of us worked,’ said a survivor; ‘we simply starved.’ The scene inside the enclosure of Block 20 was one which no visiting SS officer would want to miss. He would be taken up to the watchtower that overlooked the compound, and it was said that the visitors would remain there for a long time, quietly observing the scene.3 Block 20 was built like the others on a concrete base, but on a mound that sloped down to the wall. Even so, the wall was not high: at the northern end it was less than 2.5 metres, and the rest of it was even less. The two watchtowers were not of the high granite variety built into the wall, but instead of wood, set back from the wall, and relatively low. The idea of an attempt at mass escape came from a group of 17 Soviet officers who had arrived in Mauthausen, following their escape and recapture elsewhere, towards the end of January 1945. Like many of the other prisoners in Block 20 they were air force officers.4 Still in reasonable physical condition, but aware that they were all very soon to die, they formed their plan. The peculiarity of this plan was its spontaneity: those planning it had no contact either with the international organization in the camp or with the Austrian resistance outside.5 Its ultimate success was due to the fact that all those taking part were officers: they knew how to organize a breakout, they knew all about German weapons, and they were driven by starvation and despair. The plan was laid for the night of 28–9 January, but the SS succeeded in uncovering the plan, and two days before the scheduled date they pounced, seizing and shooting 25 of the prisoners, including all 17 of those who planned it.6 How the SS discovered the plan has never been clarified: either their preparations, which had to be made in full view of the watchtowers, were detected by the guards, or they were betrayed.7 Others now prepared a new attempt. On the night of 2 February, when the prisoners had been ordered into their Block and the SS guards had left the compound, the inmates began by creeping up into the area in the middle of the Block set aside as always for the Blockältester and his underlings. In Block 20 it was an area particularly well appointed. Together with the shower and the latrines was a bath with a wooden lid, used for drowning the prisoners, and iron hooks set in the walls, used for strangling them. On this particular night, the prisoners reached the Blockältester, a robust Austrian Green, and slit his throat, while others strangled his seven acolytes, including the three Stubendiener: the Poles Adam and Volodka, and the Russian cavalry lieutenant Mikhaïl Ikhanov, known as ‘Mishka the Tartar’. At 00.50 on 3 February the signal was given. Apart from 65 prisoners who were too sick to take part, the entire Block now participated in the attack. A prisoner put on the clothes of the Blockältester with his Kapo armband marked BL 20, and in correct German shouted the order: ‘Kanaken ’raus!’ It was not unusual for the SS to arrive at a Block in the middle of the night and haul all the inmates outside for a general beating. The ruse earned the prisoners a few valuable seconds while the plan moved into operation. The tables and chairs from the Kapos’ quarters were rushed to the wall, while the beams of the searchlights turned night into day. Central to the plan’s success was the use of the two fire-extinguishers, taken from each of the two Blockstuben. Each extinguisher was entrusted to a team of three men, with each

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team assigned to one of the two watchtowers. The rest of the prisoners were to let loose on the guards in the watchtowers with every missile they had assembled: stones, wooden clogs, pieces of wood, even cakes of soap seized from the Blockältester’s bedroom, but most of all coal used for his stove. Other scores of prisoners raced to the granites wall, bending forward while others jumped onto their shoulders to clamber up and throw wet clothes and blankets on the electric wire, causing a short-circuit. This plunged the entire camp into a blackout at the very moment that the alert sounded. Under the barrage of missiles from hundreds of desperate men, the guard in one tower, unable to protect himself unless he were to crouch behind the low wooden barrier and thus interrupt his fire, was neutralized and then blinded by a prisoner with an extinguisher, whereupon his heavy machinegun was used to silence the other. Both then continued firing on the adjacent watchtowers and on the SS guards as they raced in darkness to the scene. Mauthausen had never seen such pandemonium, with the whole Lager wakened by the wail of the sirens and the rattle of the machine-guns. All the time prisoners were clambering over the eastern and southern walls, with that frenzy to escape that only the doomed can know. Even now, there were those who sacrificed their own survival by offering the chance to others, covering the barbed wire with their bodies to enable others to cross.8 In the initial break-out, only a few dozen, and perhaps as few as 14 men, were mowed down by the SS machine-guns. As many as 419 scaled the wall. As they streamed east, north-east, and south-east, they faced several hundred yards of open, rolling fields, guarded, if not by an outer fence,9 at least by a ring of half a dozen isolated wood-built watchtowers with machine-guns mounted. Some 300 yards to the right was a farm, and 800 yards to the left, woods, but not extensive enough to offer a safe hiding-place. In this direction too, the fugitives found themselves at Schloss Marbach, just north of the tent camp,10 and took it to be a Gasthaus. Bursting into it in a frantic search for shoes, food, clothing and weapons (perhaps in that order of priority, since their survival depended primarily upon their ability to run), they discovered soon enough that they had entered a hostel for SS officers and their families. Tumbling out of bed, the SS shot all they could and pursued the rest. While most of the prisoners, in their race for the forest, took this north-easterly direction, a few, in their search for the same commodities, stopped to break into the Erkennungsdienst, precisely because it was next door to Block 20. They found nothing there they wanted, but they refrained from smashing anything, as Antonio García discovered the next morning. One group, led by Colonel Grigori Zabolotniak, from Siberia, headed southwards to the Danube, encountering an antiaircraft battery on their way. Having nothing but their bare hands to fight with, they overpowered the German crew, strangling them and seizing their small arms as well as a truck parked nearby. Zabolotniak placed his wounded and exhausted in the truck and headed east, but columns of motorized infantry dispatched from Linz overtook and annihilated the Soviet group. The manhunt now underway11 was pursued with a ferocity that knew no bounds. For four days, every available SS man and every SS dog in the region was

170 THE SOVIET BREAK-OUT FROM THE DEATH BLOCK

mobilized. So too were the Austrian civilians in the surrounding areas, who heard the news on Radio Linz. Ziereis and Bachmayer made it clear to them that the fugitives were Schwerverbrecher (dangerous criminals), and a reward was offered for every fugitive they killed. Those who might have been tempted in the opposite direction were given a blunt warning, carried by loudspeakers in vehicles driven through every village in the area: ‘For hiding: death! For assistance: death!’ The bulk of the evidence shows that the Nazis had little to fear in this regard from the Austrian populace. Although they knew well enough that the fugitives were not criminals but prisoners of war, their initial reaction was one of fear of what the escaped prisoners could do to them in revenge. The Russians, for their part, had even told one another that they could trust the Austrian civilians because they were Catholic. That they showed respect towards the civilian population is shown in the report of the Mauthausen Gendarmerie.12 Once, however, the Austrian civilians discovered that the fugitives showed no hostility towards them it was they, the Austrian civilians, who turned aggressive. ‘Their homes and farms and places of business,’ writes Gordon Horwitz, ‘were extensions of the camp.’13 It was primarily the civilians, adds Michel Fabréguet, who did the work of recapturing the fugitives.14 The Gendarmerie in Mauthausen village, commanded by Inspector Fleischmann, had been alerted by a telephone call from Ziereis at 2 a.m. on the morning of 3 February. Ziereis gave the order that all police and local Volkssturm personnel be assigned to the hunt and that no captured fugitive was to be brought back to the camp alive. By early afternoon on 3 February, Dr Teichmann, chief of criminal police (Kripo) in Linz, could report to Berlin that 300 fugitives had been recaptured, of whom 57 were still alive.15 Little enthusiasm, it was reported, was being shown by the men of the Gendarmerie, who did not capture a single prisoner.16 The Volkssturm, on the other hand, took a willing part: among them was Erich Gattinger, manager of the Poschacher firm in Heinrichsbrunn, who captured the Russian Lieutenant Orvbiec and handed him over to Fleischmann. Fleischmann phoned the camp to report the capture, only to be upbraided for not knowing that no prisoner was to be brought back alive. Since Fleischmann still hesitated to shoot Orvbiec, the SS arrived to collect him. All together, some 100 escaped prisoners were brought into the local police stations and most were shot on the spot, including 30 in Ried in der Riedmark who were executed behind the primary school (Volksschule). While some of the corpses were taken to the Lager for cremation, others were buried in the military cemetery on the other side of Mauthausen village. In Schwertberg, the Gendarmerie chief Johann Kohout was even more reluctant to carry out his orders. When he took delivery of seven Russians recaptured by the civilians, he did not shoot them but instead held them in his jail. Hearing this, Leopold Boehmberger, a local shopowner and fanatical Nazi, though without any position of authority, marched into the Gendarmerie and reminded Kohout of the SS orders that every prisoner recaptured was to be instantly shot. Boehmberger then dragged the Russians out and shot all seven himself.17 In Ried, a Wehrmacht soldier, witness to the atrocities being committed, asked an SS

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if he was out of his mind. It was fortunate for the soldier that the SS were too busy to respond.18 Meanwhile in the Hauptlager, the extent of mobilization was such that the work Kommandos were not able to leave the camp on 3 February for lack of guards to accompany them. For two days the disfigured corpses of the Russians continued to arrive in the camp, over 300 in all, many of them dragged by a cord attached to their feet. The SS announced that every last fugitive had been killed, but that was soon contradicted. The corpses were taken to the Bunker for identification prior to being carted off to the crematorium, and Ramón Bargueño reports that the registration numbers of several did not correspond to those in Block 20. He suggests that the SS made up the required number from a convoy that arrived at Mauthausen station on the same day, and several of these prisoners were deliberately killed and used to fill up the blanks.19 Witnessing with his own eyes the events now taking place in and around the Bunker, Bargueño recounts the rage with which the SS in the Bunker took revenge on the prisoners they held in the cells, and upon the women and children evacuated from other camps who arrived at Mauthausen in two convoys on the morrow of the great escape. These were forced to undress along the wall behind the Bunker. A child of two began to cry, from hunger or from cold. An SS officer picked it up and smashed its head against the wall, then kicked the mother towards the gas chamber for which they were all intended. The effect that this had on Niedermayer remains vividly in Bargueño’s memory. The man whom Michel de Boüard describes as one of the four most brutal men in Mauthausen, having witnessed the action of his superior officer, now hurried back inside the prison and there, in front of Bargueño, he pulled from his pocket a photograph of his wife and little daughter and, as Bargueño had seen him do many times before, burst into tears. It would seem that this staff-sergeant was capable of any crime when drunk, but at other times he suffered to see atrocities.20 Meanwhile, the SS officials admitted that 17 to 19 of the fugitives had not been recaptured.21 How these fugitives survived is known only in part. Two of them, Captain Ivan Bitukov (air force) and Lieutenant Viktor Ukrainzev (army), stole at dead of night into the property of the mayor of Holzleiten and hid in his loft. While for many days the mayor eagerly devoted himself to the manhunt, his three farmhands (who were Russian and Polish prisoners of war) supplied the two fugitives with food, shoes and civilian clothes until they departed 14 days later.22 Only four of the more than 400 prisoners who escaped found refuge among the Austrian civilian populace. Semjon Shakov arrived at the farm near Schwertberg belonging to Theresia and Johann Mascherbauer, the parents of five children. The family had already faced a severe test when the Nazi pursuers discovered, on the first day of the break-out, the fugitive they had sheltered in their barn. He was shot in front of the children, but since it was the first day after the escape the family was not held responsible. Despite their terrible and constant fear—a neighbour reported her suspicions to the police, and the family had to contend with more than one police search—the Mascherbauers took Shakov in and continued to hide him until the end of the war.23 Another couple in the same area, Maria and Johann Langthaler of Winden,

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were also the parents of five children. The father worked as a labourer in the Poschacher quarry in Mauthausen. Their eldest son Alfred was serving in the Volkssturm in Schwertberg, but the other four children were at home. The parents were nonetheless prepared to help when two famished, shivering Russians, Michail Rjabchinski and Nikolaï Zemkalo, were found by Johann hiding in his hayloft. They let them stay, moving them later into the attic of their home, where they remained until the end of the war.24 In both cases it was the wife and mother who took the initiative. A tribute should also be paid to the Wittberger family in Lanzenberg near Perg, who on at least one occasion protected a fugitive for several days, providing him with food and clothing.25 Those left behind in Block 20 were liquidated, with the single exception of a Russian Komsomol member named Ivan, from Leningrad, whom Juan de Diego saved by finding him a post in a group of electricians.26 The fugitives had been hunted down with a savagery that opened the eyes of every Austrian who saw it. The bestiality into which Austria had fallen was no longer the secret of those in Mauthausen village; the whole surrounding region was now informed. Does this mean, as has been suggested,27 that SS savagery diminished in the final weeks? The evidence, as we shall see, is mixed; certainly the evacuations of the Nebenlager showed no hint of declining ferocity. As for the Soviets who succeeded in the great break-out in reaching Soviet lines, the great surprise was waiting for them. A most distinguished Russian survivor, Boris Abramov, disclosed to West European survivors visiting Moscow 30 years later that the Russians of Block 20 who survived the Hasenjagd and reached the USSR had to go into hiding and remain in hiding for years in order to escape Stalin’s demented reprisals.28 The other mass break-out took place at Loibl-Pass, where some 5000 prisoners were digging a tunnel between Austria and Yugoslavia. Several Spaniards were among those who attempted the escape, but only 150 prisoners, including two Spaniards, managed to avoid recapture. Making their way over a mountain range which none of them knew, without arms or provisions, they succeeded in reaching Tito’s forces. The two surviving Spaniards are mentioned in the official Yugoslav history of the war. One of them arrived disguised as a herdsman, leading a cow he had brought all the way from Austria.29 Neither of the Spaniards is recorded by name, but the Spaniard leading the cow was given the nickname cika (in Serb, uncle), a nickname bestowed in good humour on anyone of a certain age. The Spaniard was, in fact, still young; he simply looked old.30 KZ life tended to have that effect.

14 Mauthausen as the terminus of evacuation

From February 1945 the Wehrmacht was in rout, and this offered quite new perspectives, but it was also clear that the period before liberation was going to be the most dangerous of all. Three plans were worked out, to meet the three most likely situations: an attempt by the SS to poison the entire prisoner population by mixing some toxic product in the soup; an Allied parachute drop in the vicinity of the camp; and a mass evacuation of the prisoners by forced march. In the first eventuality, it was decided that a careful watch would be sufficient, and for the second, final plans were laid for an assault on the armoury. Block 2, close to the main gate, became the command post. It was the third eventuality that was considered the most likely. The prisoners knew, from the accounts of survivors now reaching Mauthausen, that in an evacuation from one camp to another, four out of every five prisoners died or were murdered on the road. In a convoy of 12 000 men dispatched to Buchenwald at the beginning of April 1945, uncounted thousands were shot on the road by Hitlerjugend and even by women, with 74 of them murdered on the last stretch, the few miles from Weimar up the hill.1 The international committee concluded that Mauthausen’s population would be driven either into the Austrian mountain redoubts or to Gusen, where all would be exterminated by gas in the underground tunnels of St Georgen. Its conclusion was perceptive. We now know that on 4 April 1945, Himmler instructed the commandants of KL-Flossenbürg and KL-Dachau to evacuate their prisoners immediately, without allowing a single prisoner to fall into enemy hands alive.2 On his death-bed, Ziereis disclosed that he had received an order from Pohl in February to the effect that if the war were lost, every last prisoner was to be killed; Ziereis added that the Reichsführer subsequently ordered him to convey all his prisoners into the Kellerbau and Bergkristall tunnels in Gusen and to blow them up with dynamite.3 The international committee therefore decided that an attack on the SS would be launched no later than the afternoon of the first day’s march, that is to say before the prisoners were too tired. ‘Shock’ units were to place themselves in the two ranks closest to the guards. The signal would be divulged at the moment the column left Mauthausen, and when the signal was given the ‘shock’ units were to hurl themselves on the guards, whatever the consequences might be.4

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Any more distant evacuation was quite unlikely for those at Mauthausen, located as it was almost exactly in the centre of the invading Allied armies. It was, instead, the evacuation of so many other camps and Kommandos to Mauthausen that increased the danger, this time from mass starvation. In the last months of 1944, convoys had begun to arrive from Poland and France. While only a small fraction of the prisoners survived the journey, their arrival at Mauthausen increased the strain on the already dwindling food supplies.5 Although the general direction of evacuation was to the west, if all accounts are to be believed there was a certain confusion in the orders.6 The first evacuees to reach Mauthausen were several hundred Poles who arrived from Warsaw in June 1944, followed by two convoys from Auschwitz on 28 September and 3 November. If these early evacuations were by train rather than forced march, the wagons were often of the transporter (open platform) variety, with the SS guards mounted between, watching to see if any head rose too high; if one did, they would shoot at it as if it were a revolving rabbit at a fairground.7 Another convoy from Auschwitz in January 1945, probably the last, took fourteen days to arrive, in temperatures of between −10 and −20°C. When the train pulled in to Mauthausen station, it was found that half the wagons contained nothing but corpses.8 In command of the SS guards who brought the prisoners from Auschwitz was SS-Hauptscharführer Kaduk, assisted by SS-Unterscharführer Erich Miessner and a number of Auschwitz Kapos. Kaduk and Miessner, aided by the Oberkapo Willy Frey, were now given responsibility for the tent camp (Zeltlager).9 Others were sent to Gusen. Ziereis himself admitted on his death-bed that 2500 prisoners who survived the journey from Auschwitz were hosed down on their arrival in the Hauptlager and then marched naked to that Nebenlager. They included at least 150 former members of the International Brigades.10 After Mauthausen and Dachau, it was Buchenwald that contained the largest number of Spanish prisoners.11 Like Mauthausen, and unlike Dachau, Buchenwald saw the creation of a secret organization which saved the prisoner population from an even larger hecatomb than was the case.12 Construction of a gas chamber at Buchenwald did not begin until January 1945, when a large area of the SS barracks was torn down to make way for the new building. The Bau Kommandos were under permanent surveillance, and the SS dogs were trained to bite any prisoner who stopped working even for a few seconds. Even so, the prisoners succeeded in destroying each day what they had built the day before, and this sabotage, coupled with the damage caused by Allied bombing, forced the SS in March 1945 to abandon the project and to rely, for their liquidation of all sick and disabled prisoners, on execution by intracardiac injection. Each morning in Block 61, which was selected for the purpose, a large number of syringes filled with concentrated phenol were laid out on a table for the use of the SS male-nurse, who was assisted by a Kapo. SS documents which survived show that no fewer than 16 685 prisoners were exterminated between January 1945 and the camp’s liberation on 11 April. Few of the corpses could be burnt in the crematorium because the crematorium was barely in operation, due to the lack of fuel and transport caused by Allied air

MAUTHAUSEN AS THE TERMINUS OF EVACUATION 175

attacks. As a result, the corpses were piled up in giant ditches dug outside the camp, and the fear of epidemic was real.13 As the Allied forces advanced, the first evacuation left for Mauthausen on 3 February 1945, arriving four days later. Of the 3000 who set out, only 1200 reached Mauthausen alive.14 Altogether, half the population of Buchenwald was evacuated, and the vast majority died. At Buchenwald’s Nebenlager at Ohrdruf, 40 kilometres south-west of Weimar, 8000 prisoners stayed behind to work underground, excavating the tunnel shelter for Hitler’s private train in accordance with a contingency plan to evacuate the Führer’s headquarters from Berlin. On 3 April, two days before the Kommando was overrun by units of US Third Army, the 8000 prisoners were massacred, each one shot in the back of the neck by members of Hitlerjugend.15 Two more convoys of evacuated prisoners arrived in Mauthausen in midFebruary and met an identical fate. The first arrived at noon on 15 February from Oranienburg. Of the 2500 prisoners who set out, only 1700 were still alive. The weakest 200, including Major-General Dimitry Mikhailovich Karbychev of the Red Army, were made to stand at attention in the Appellplatz, naked in a temperature varying from −1 to −15°C, for the rest of the day, through the night, and through the following day. For good measure, the firemen were ordered to douse them with their hoses. Some 150 died, in coffins of ice, including General Karbychev, who was determined to die on his feet. To finish off the last 50, the SS, armed with cudgels and axes, waded in, bathing in gaping wounds. The next day, 17 February, another convoy arrived from Sachsenhausen, similar in the number who started out and the number who died en route. A survivor, Irène Gaucher, has described how some prisoners sank into cannibalism, deciding in advance of a comrade’s death who was to have his arm and leg muscles; two other prisoners waited only for a comrade to die before opening his chest and eating, raw, the heart and liver.16 On arrival at Mauthausen, it was Trum and a Blockführer who selected the weakest 500. These included several children, none of whom had eaten for three days, and who stood and cried. All 500 were ordered to strip and to form a line along the Klagemauer. Again the firemen played jets of ice-cold water on them throughout the night. A group of Russians and Poles thought they could ingratiate themselves into the favour of the SS by assisting them in killing a number of their fellow-prisoners, thus completing a total that they imagined the SS required. They therefore began pushing their fellow-prisoners against the wall to smash their heads against it. A French cavalry officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Jacques de Dionne, was badly injured, but succeeded in strangling to death the Pole who tried to kill him. The prisoners remained there 18 hours, naked and soaked in a temperature estimated by de Dionne at −18 °C. The SS took them in groups into the showers, for sessions of 20 minutes with water that ran from freezing to scalding and back to freezing. They were then returned to the wall, without drying, to face the wind. This continued through the night. De Dionne called on his fellow-prisoners to join him in rushing the SS, but none of them had any courage left. In the morning, Niedermayer, assisted by Bachmayer’s driver and a few Blockführer, waded in with bludgeons and iron bars. Then three of them left, to return with axes. They then aimed at the

176 SURVIVAL

heads, several of which they sliced from the bodies. De Dionne buried himself under the bodies of the dead, from which he derived some warmth, and though a blow from an axe, intended as the coup de grâce, landed on his shoulder, scarring him for life, he escaped a mortal wound. He was taken as dead to the crematorium, where, to the amazement of everyone present, he stood up. It has been said that he was hidden and looked after by the prisoners working in the crematorium Kommando, but it seems certain that the Kommandoführer, Martin Roth, was also present and that his reaction at seeing a survivor of that terrible scene was to laugh, and to let him go to tell his tale to his fellow-prisoners, since de Dionne would soon be dead. But de Dionne did not die. He lived to supply the Allied War Crimes Commission, and the Nuremberg Tribunal, with eye-witness testimony. The scene was also witnessed by members of the kitchen staff, the kitchen Block being less than 50 yards from the Klagemauer. Further evidence was provided by many other prisoners in the surrounding huts (including Juan de Diego in Block 2) who heard the shouts and screams all night long.17 The evidence that appeared showed that this massacre had been planned in advance, no doubt in revenge for the mass escape, and that Schulz attended it in person.18 In the convoy from Sachsenhausen was a German Jew from Odessa by the name of Salomon Smolianov, who being stateless wore the blue as well as the yellow triangle. Before he became a prisoner his profession had been to renovate the works of great artists and to make facsimiles, an art which had gained him a certain celebrity. He had been sent to Sachsenhausen with 141 other prisoners, most of them Jewish and all of them taken from various prisons when Heydrich established in that camp the centre of the Nazi counterfeit-sterling industry (Operation Bernhard),19 under the command of SS-Sturmbannführer Bernhard Krüger. Now on 1 March 1945 the entire unit was to be set up in Austria. Juan de Diego was able to speak with Smolianov about his work, before the unit, now ordered to produce counterfeit documents and dollars, was sent off on 14 April 1945 to its new centre at Redl-Zipf, officially known as Schlier.20 On 2 March 1945, a convoy left Ravensbrück with 1981 women and children. Five days later, in the middle of the night, they reached Mauthausen, where every woman who could not walk was shot in the head.21 The rest were shown the full standard SS reception the whole distance from the station to the main gate; many spent the first night standing in the snow, chained to the wall. As a result, only 1799 were still alive when registration was completed on 10 March; the 182 who had died included all the children, those surviving the journey being murdered on arrival. Among the survivors who were registered were 579 French and four Spanish women. One of the Frenchwomen, Gisèle Guillemot, has paid tribute to the Spanish women for their efforts in the washroom to bolster the courage of the rest.22 The women were kept separate from the men by every possible barrier, but the news still moved, and many women experienced the emotional shock of finding that the camp contained a comrade, a family member, or even a husband, which was the case for two of the Spanish women: the wives of José Ester Borrás and Joaquín Olaso Piera. In the case of the first, Alfonsina Bueno de Ester, though she,

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her husband and her brother were to survive, her father perished.23 The Olaso couple were actually reunited, in the Revier; it was the only known case of a male and female prisoner meeting.24 The women in general found themselves treated no better than the men. Alfonsina de Ester recalls how they too worked in the quarry and carried rocks of 20 kg up the 186 steps, and how three exhausted women, unable to go farther, were hurled to the bottom with their rocks.25 Others were sent to the Bunker where, with Bargueño as witness, they were forced to undress in the corridor and were then axed to death.26 Despite everything, the mere presence of the women galvanized the men, which in turn fortified the energies of both.27 The arrival in Mauthausen of women from Ravensbrück and elsewhere meant the arrival also of some 20 or 30 SS women guards.28 That meant setting up a Block for the SS women, which would be cleaned like any other SS Block by the selected prisoners. Unsurprisingly, the SS women, who were all in their twenties, were attracted to the Spaniards. One of the women, in authority over the others, noticed a Spaniard, a certain Sanz from Madrid, among the prisoners cleaning the Block, With infinite care, but with firm resolution, she arranged a tryst.29 Sanz was truly terrified, during the sexual bout that followed, and even more so after it ended. It is true that the SS woman was risking her life no less than he was risking his (by yielding or by refusing), but Sanz expressed no feeling after the incident other than blind terror, and begged the prisoner network to find him a new assignment.30 Not all the women evacuated from Ravensbrück were directed to Mauthausen. A different fate befell Conchita Ramos Veleta, who had been taken prisoner in southern France and dispatched in the ‘ghost train’ from Toulouse to Dachau.31 From Dachau she reached Ravensbrück on 9 September 1944, finding it infinitely worse, with filth and stench beyond description. There she found herself among a group of Resistance women who had been arrested in the Hôtel Moderne in Figeac. One of them was a 24-year-old Spanish maid named Mimi Tapia, who had sunk into nervous depression; unable to work, she was sent to the gas chamber. Ramos and the others were sent to a Kommando on the River Spree south-east of Berlin, where a two-storey factory had been built of wood; inside, 500 women, divided into two shifts of 12 hours, laboured in the construction of aircraft. Gone was the German passion for cleanliness: all the women were suffering to some degree from dysentery, and there were only four toilets. Meanwhile the Allied bombing increased, and in April 1945 the factory was destroyed. The SS kept the women in an underground cell for three days, then transported them westwards across Berlin. It was 14 April. The day of the Spanish Republic would remain in their memory, as their eyes now perused the smoking ruins of Hitler’s capital. However little their lives were worth, however much life hung by a thread, it was a point of infinite satisfaction to them all to see what Nazi Germany had come to. From Berlin, some, including Conchita’s cousin, were sent to Bergen-Belsen; others, including Conchita, went to Oranienburg, where they found themselves face to face with the former Spanish Prime Minister Largo Caballero. They were now put to work with pick and shovel digging trenches and erecting fortifications as the Battle of Berlin moved towards its climax. With the approach of the Russians, the last 85 women

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were ordered to join a convoy on the road towards Rostock. They pledged to one another that, whatever happened, they would not abandon anyone too weak to walk; it had an enormous impact on the morale of each. ‘It will be over soon. Another small effort,’ they told one another again and again. One night they arrived in a pine forest. The trees were young, the branches low. Ramos and 21 others darted into a copse. That night the SS opened up with machine-guns, killing all but the 22 who lay motionless in the copse. Conchita Ramos was to live and find her way home to Toulouse.32 At the Nibelungenwerke at St Valentin, production of Panther tanks ended abruptly on 21 March 1945 when the plant was demolished in an Allied air attack. The prisoners were evacuated to the Hauptlager, only a few miles away, but at the Danube the SS escort found no bridge intact and they were forced to cross by ferry. On their arrival at the fortress they were ordered into the shower room where a prisoner was on hand with three buckets of paint: red, blue and black. An SS officer then took the very briefest look at each prisoner, weighing him in his mind, and then calling out to the prisoner-attendant the colour of paint to be applied in a cross on his chest. If the prisoner was judged to weigh 35 kg or less, he was given red; these prisoners went to the gas chamber at once, in groups of 100. If his weight was assessed at 40 kg, he was given blue; these went to the Revier, to wait their turn for the gas chamber. If he was judged to be of at least 45 kg, he was spared, and sent to work on the Lager’s defence fortifications.33 Among the last evacuations was that of Mauthausen’s tent camp, which was provisional in the first place. In December 1944, 400 prisoners, under the command of SS-Oberscharführer Heinrich Haeger, were sent to Gunskirchen, near Wels, to construct a new camp in the nearby forest. On 20 April 1945, all those in the Tent Camp who were able to walk, some 10 000 in number, were marched out towards Gunskirchen. Some 200 prisoners who were unable to walk were then beaten to death, in the sight of witnesses, by Kaduk, Miessner and Frey. Among the witnesses was the Green Kapo Hans Schmeling, who would later testify. As head of the burial Kommando, he had been engaged since 20 February 1945 in the digging of a mass grave (Massengrab) outside the perimeter, and the burying of the bodies of these 200 Jews was simply part of his daily work.34 If Schmeling’s Kommando was fully employed in the digging of mass graves, it was because Mauthausen’s crematorium could no longer keep pace with the mortalities. In February 1945 the SS ordered that the crematorium be used in future only for those who had been gassed, shot or beaten to death, and that all others be taken to the Massengrab. The burial, and not the incineration, of the 200 Jews beaten to death in the Tent Camp shows that again the crematorium could not keep pace, and some 11 000 bodies had to be buried in the period of 23 February to 30 April 1945. Meanwhile in the crematorium, Wilhelm Ornstein, the prisoner who served as its clerk, realized only too well what his own fate would be when he witnessed an incident at 2.30 in the morning of 6 April 1945. Gauleiter Eigruber had arrived from Linz to be present at the execution in the ‘portrait studio’ of three Allied pilots (two USAAF and one RAF), together with five prisoners who had

MAUTHAUSEN AS THE TERMINUS OF EVACUATION 179

formerly worked in the Auschwitz crematorium. The killing of these five marked the beginning of the destruction of Mauthausen’s evidence. As for the gas chamber, since its capacity was equally insufficient for its need, its victims were more and more the result of selection. It continued in operation right up until the end of April 1945, and its last victims would be Austrian civilians, both men and women— and decorated Wehrmacht soldiers.35

15 Growing fears of a general massacre

The continuing use of the gas chamber, which could not be kept secret, added to the well-founded fears of the international committee. We have seen that Ziereis had received an order from Pohl, unquestionably endorsed by Himmler and Kaltenbrunner, to the effect that if the war were lost, not one prisoner was to survive. Ziereis, with responsibility for every camp in Austria, called a meeting in the Kommandantur of all his officers and informed them of the order from Berlin. The plan proposed was to assemble all the prisoners in the Appellplatz and, at a given moment, open fire with all the machine-guns in the watch-towers, at the same time firing anti-tank grenades into the Blocks to set them ablaze. The Resistance got to know about the plan, but it also discovered that the SS were divided on the question of implementing the order, with one side fearing for their future. In their hesitation, they were overtaken by events. The Wehrmacht was now in rout. Many of the German and Austrian Greens in Mauthausen, and even some Polish Greens, had by now been incorporated, willy-nilly, into SS units. The irony is striking: it was into the Waffen-SS units, traditionally all-volunteer, and not into the Wehrmacht, that these criminals were being conscripted. The reasoning behind it was that such elements would do more damage to German morale if enlisted in the Wehrmacht. Even women from the Mauthausen and Gusen brothels, 18 or 19 in number (hence, virtually all) were incorporated in March 1945 into a women’s Waffen-SS unit.1 For those prisoners who could still laugh, it caused great merriment to learn that the SS was now putting prostitutes into its uniform; it told them that Nazi Germany had reached the very end. Gusen’s brothel was then used to imprison 45 Ukrainians, members of an SS unit who had been sent to Gusen as guards and had attempted a revolt. From Gusen they were sent to Mauthausen’s prison, and to the tender care of Niedermayer. A surviving document signed by Niedermayer shows that they were gassed on 15 April.2 Gusen’s own gas chamber was achieving all it could. More than 600 prisoners in the hospital of Gusen I were gassed at this moment, while some 800 inmates in Gusen II were beaten to death and their bodies brought to Gusen I to be burnt in the crematorium. On 15 April the Red Army was already in Vienna. That morning August Eigruber, the Gauleiter of Oberdonau, was called to the headquarters of Generaloberst Dr Lothar Rendulic, Commander-in-Chief of the German forces in Ostmark. Eigruber was instructed to inform Ziereis personally that Himmler had agreed to the

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formation of an SS regiment from the Mauthausen garrison.3 This unit, stuffed with prisoner volunteers, became known to the prisoners as the Afrikakorps, since the only German uniforms available to them were the old uniforms of Rommel’s desert army.4 According to one more cherished piece of Spanish communist folklore, accepted in Spain as history, Ziereis issued an open threat to the Spaniards that if they did not follow the example of the Blue Division and fight the Russians they would forfeit their last chance to survive, whereupon the Spaniards refused en bloc and the SS desisted.5 The truth of the matter is that only those of German stock were enrolled, only Greens, and only in Mauthausen and Gusen.6 At Gusen, the sense of impending doom was stronger than anywhere, with the single exception of Ebensee. The vast tunnels seemed to beckon like enormous tombs. Whole camp populations could be buried alive. Add to that the squalor of Gusen I, where the Muselmänner were more in evidence than anywhere else in the Reich. The SS figures for 27 March 1945 show a population for Gusen I of 10 415; Gusen II, 10 893; and Gusen III, 304.7 With the evacuation westwards of the Kommandos in eastern Austria, Gusen (and Ebensee) would contain populations at least as high as that of the Hauptlager itself, and in a smaller space.8 More than 37 000 prisoners died in the Gusen camps alone,9 and the scene in April 1945 has been described: the sick lying naked, three to a filthy bunk, on a mattress of straw and muck, suffering from typhus, dysentery, tuberculosis, pneumonia, and more diseases besides than can be listed, and each bunk sharing a single blanket stained with urine, soup, excrement, and blood.10 Block 31, known as the ‘Bahnhof’ and used for those suffering from dysentery, was the worst of all: the victims lay on the ground where they were flung, covered in their own excrement and that of others, denied food, and left to die.11 Gusen’s rudimentary resistance was challenged in the extreme by what the SS now intended for the prisoners, and indeed for all Austrian civilians who were acquainted with the Gusen tunnel operations, especially those in the town of St Georgen. From the evidence presented by the International Red Cross delegates who spoke with Ziereis in April 1945, we know that Ziereis passed on an order to Seidler to liquidate the populations of Gusen I and II, estimated at some 40 000 people, by stacking 24 tons of dynamite in advance in the tunnels of the underground aircraft factories, then herding the prisoners inside, and blowing up the entrances.12 Seidler’s preparations were helped by the fact that Allied airraids on St Georgen were frequent and expected to multiply. St Georgen stood on the main rail route between Linz and Prague—the tracks actually run on each side of the town —and Allied air reconnaissance had ascertained that St Georgen was a centre of arms production. Austrian civilians lived in terror of all orders issued by the SS, which they had no choice but to obey. Air-raid drill had been worked out in detail long before. Whenever the air-raid warning was given, the drill required that the first to take refuge in the tunnels were the school children, followed by women with infants, followed in order by other sectors of the civilian population. The civilians might have to stay inside the tunnels for hours, during which they were separated from the prisoners only by a wooden barrier. This had the effect of confusing all those inside

182 GROWING FEARS OF A GENERAL MASSACRE

as to what distinction, if any, the SS intended to make between the prisoners and the civilians, whose fear was steadily increasing. By 28 April, an explosives depot had been set up close to the tunnel complex, and the entrances to two of the three Sandkeller tunnels in Gusen I had been walled up.13 Powerful mines were then placed at the entrances to the Kellerbau and Bergkristal tunnels, set to detonate on command.14 At Ebensee, up until January 1945, almost all convoys had arrived from the Hauptlager, and only one from outside Austria (that from KL-Oranienburg on 25 September 1944).15 From February 1945, the departure points were more varied. With the arrival of those evacuated from other Nebenlager, especially Melk,16 the population of Ebensee rose from some 9000 at the end of 1944 to a peak of 18 509 on 23 April 1945.17 The mortality rate, on the other hand, was rising commensurately: from 705 in January 1945, it rose to 1852 in February and to 4587 (and to over 200 deaths a day) in April.18 The bread ration by that time had been cut by half for those working, and by two-thirds for those too sick to work. As a result, the prisoners were reduced to eating almost anything: grass, leaves, lignite, and in the tunnels they would chew on wood or the pitch used for the manufacture of synthetic fuel.19 Those in the Revier were now lying (as elsewhere) up to five to a bed, and cannibalism broke out in Block 26. Cannibalism was the one inmate reaction that caused the SS to worry, since it told them they were losing control. In the closing weeks, the death toll reached, and even exceeded, 300 a day.20 But with no reduction in the influx, the population of Ebensee on the day of liberation stood between 16 650 and 18 000,21 including 7566 sick.22 As at Gusen and elsewhere, more and more of the SS guards in the closing months and weeks had been sent off to the eastern front, to be replaced by old Wehrmacht veterans and men of the Austrian Volkssturm who were made to wear SS uniform but who had not entered the SS. Only the ratio is different: it seems that Ganz at Ebensee retained more SS than did Seidler at Gusen. On the other hand, at Ebensee the contacts that the prisoners’ resistance organization had made enabled the prisoners to know exactly what Ganz intended in their regard. The reports they received from their chief collaborators confirmed one another. Hauptmann Payrleitner, Dr Rudolf Pekar, and the Luftwaffe sergeant Josef Poltrum all said the same, and Payrleitner heard it from visits to the officers’ mess: the prisoners were to be driven into the tunnels, and then the entire population was to be annihilated by blowing up the entrance.23 Poltrum provided the concrete evidence: in the late evening of 3 May 1945, he was resting on a tree trunk near the entrance to a tunnel, pondering the matter, when he saw Ganz approaching, accompanied by five or six SS guards, all weighed down by the load they carried on their shoulders. Knowing his life was in danger, Poltrum immediately took cover, but drew closer, and watched while the men carried their burden to the entrance of a tunnel.24 In reporting the event that night to a member of the international committee, Poltrum estimated the weight of the dynamite at 40 kg.25 All together, by the beginning of May 1945, it would be 81 000 survivors, distributed in the 11 camps that alone remained of the giant Mauthausen complex,

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Table 5

who would await the arrival of their liberators. The last roll-calls held, on 3 May 1945, provide the following figures:26 No one suspected, least of all Hitler, that while Himmler was issuing annihilation orders he was also seeking contacts to negotiate a separate peace with the Western Allies, and in the process committing the worst act of treason that Hitler had ever known. At Buchenwald’s Nebenlager at Ohrdruf, a prisoner serving as Lagerschreiber to SS-Sturmbannführer Dr Schuler reported at the Liberation what he had overheard in a telephone conversation on 2 April between Himmler and the chief of police in Weimar, SS-Standartenführer Schmidt: the Lagerführer was to liquidate all the Greens and the Reds but he was to spare the Jews!27 When Buchenwald fell to US forces, the commandants of Dachau and Flossenbürg allegedly proposed to Himmler that their camps be surrendered to the advancing Allies. Himmler responded with a message to Pohl, delivered by hand on 24 April 1945 by SS-Hauptsturmführer Schwarts, containing the following order: ‘Surrender is absolutely out of the question. The camps concerned here are to be evacuated immediately. No prisoner is to fall alive into enemy hands. The prisoners of Buchenwald have dealt cruelly with the local population.’28 And yet, just four days earlier, on 20 April 1945, it was on Himmler’s orders that at Mauthausen the French, Belgian, Dutch and Luxemburger women prisoners were to assemble by national groups. They were to be evacuated to Switzerland by the Swedish Red Cross. Himmler could not have come to that decision easily. He was making certain that the truth he had taken such care to conceal would now be revealed to the whole world, and all his crimes made known.29 Up until now, the CICR had only once set foot in Mauthausen: in 1943 three trucks driven by Canadian prisoners of war arrived to evacuate 120 Norwegians.30 On 12 March 1945, however, the CICR president, Professor Carl Jacob Burckhardt, met Kaltenbrunner in Feldkirch near the Liechtenstein border. Following their meeting, two CICR officials, Jean-Maurice Rübli and Dr Claude Mayor, arrived at Mauthausen on 22 April at the head of a column of white trucks filled with supplies. The response of Ziereis was to accept all the parcels and deny the CICR officials entry into the fortress, but they were allowed to evacuate 756 women.31

184 GROWING FEARS OF A GENERAL MASSACRE

When it was discovered that there was still space in the trucks for 72 more, the places were filled by men of the same nationalities. The next day, another 183 Frenchmen were evacuated,32 and on 28 April Louis Haefliger, also representing the CICR, arrived at the head of a convoy of 19 trucks. Again Ziereis refused to allow the CICR access to the fortress, precisely because the gas chamber was still in full operation; it would be dismantled the next day. With the departure of this third convoy with 341 prisoners, almost all the French prisoners in the Hauptlager had been evacuated.33 They included Captain Olivier who commanded the 75 Frenchmen and Belgians in the AMI, while they excluded those who were too sick to be moved, and one or two who felt their services were still needed. These included Emile Valley, who now took Olivier’s place. Besides, the Frenchmen who left were soon replaced by others. A group of 722 Frenchmen were transferred to the Hauptlager from Gusen I and II on 28 April in order to be evacuated also, but they arrived just a little too late: the advance of the Americans was too rapid to allow the CICR to continue its mission.34 Still others continued to arrive in the convoys from Nebenlager in the east (especially Wiener-Neustadt, Wiener-Neudorf, Schwechat, and Modling-Hinterbrühl), mainly, if not entirely, by forced march.35 Haefliger, a bank clerk from Zurich who had volunteered on 23 April 1945 to serve as a representative of the CICR, did not return to Switzerland with the rest of the CICR team when they left on 28 April. Instead, he chose to stay in order to urge Ziereis not to carry out any further executions, and to urge him also to contact Kaltenbrunner to obtain his approval. He then left the Hauptlager that same day for St Georgen,36 where he stayed at Lehners Gasthaus on the main road near the bridge. There he met Ferdinand Lehner, the 17-year-old son of the innkeeper, from whom he understood that St Georgen was special, even in the context of Nazi Germany. Walls indeed had ears, and any conversation could be intercepted. It was a Sunday, and they agreed to take a long walk in the countryside. From that walk, Haefliger could piece together at least a part of the unique importance of Gusen to the Reich. We have seen that the vast Gusen II project was no mere blueprint. On the day that Haefliger and young Lehner were walking in the fields, the slaves in the tunnels were completing the last of the 987 Me-262 fuselages for the only jet-fighters in operation in the world. Gusen II had become of the very highest strategic value to the Reich, and it clearly required a special counter-intelligence unit to protect its secret. Hence the fear in the vicinity that anything said out loud could be monitored or intercepted. US Intelligence reports (released in 1990) nevertheless show that ‘ground information’, meaning Austrian Resistance agents providing information from the St Georgen area, had been received on 3 December 1944 to the effect that large subterranean aircraft works were already in production. The codename Bergkristall was not mentioned, but the aircraft were identified as Messerschmitt and jet-propelled, with details on the materials used in their manufacture. The ‘ground information’ also spoke of a minimum of 10 900 workers and a maximum of 28 000 workers employed in the project.37

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While Lehner could not have known the details—even the villagers of St Georgen did not know the details of the tunnel operations until the early 1990s—it was he who first alerted Haefliger to the possibility, even the certainty, that the Gusen tunnels had been mined and that a plan existed to destroy not only the underground factory but the slave workers with it, and even the local villagers who knew of its existence. With this knowledge, Haefliger returned the next day (30 April) to the Hauptlager, where he found Ziereis transformed into a man ‘feeble and trembling, aged and discouraged’. He had been able to reach Kaltenbrunner by phone, but he now asked Haefliger what he should do. He offered the Swiss delegate accommodation in his spacious home on the hill, and took him there, showing him around the various rooms, the swimming pool, the farmyard and the beehives. But Haefliger declined the invitation to stay, preferring to put up in the SS barracks outside the fortress.38 Ziereis thus allowed him to share a room with Guido Reimer,39 whose role is one of the enduring mysteries of this untold story. Reimer had served in the Luftwaffe as an Oberleutnant until late 1944, and in April 1945 at Mauthausen-Gusen he held the rank of SS-Obersturmführer. But he was no more an SS man than were the 2000 Luftwaffe men who were sent to guard Gusen II, even if at the end they wore SS uniforms. Reimer’s job was counter-intelligence, and hence had nothing to do with Bachmayer and camp security. In his post as Abwehrbeauftragter, he was responsible for destroying all documents, but he was unquestionably informed of the plans for Gusen II. Only on 2 May, with Mauthausen’s gas chamber dismantled, did Ziereis allow Haefliger to enter the fortress. On the same day, Haefliger made the acquaintance of Anton Streitwieser, who was the first in the SS to confirm that a plan existed to exterminate the Gusen prisoners on 5 May in the St Georgen tunnels, while those in the Hauptlager were to be machine-gunned or burnt alive in their Blocks. In testimony presented later in Streitwieser’s trial, Haefliger recounted that his first reaction was to distrust Streitwieser, suspecting that his motive was to obtain a free pass from the Red Cross if he should fall into American or Soviet hands. But that night, on 2–3 May, Haefliger broached the subject with Reimer in the room they shared. Since Reimer too had been a bank clerk in civil life, they had developed a friendly relationship. Taking care to let Reimer think that he had heard the report from the prisoners, and not from Streitwieser, Haefliger succeeded in getting Reimer to reveal the secret orders from Berlin. The Gusen prisoner population and the local St Georgen population were indeed to be annihilated: an air raid would be announced, the victims would be herded into the tunnels at Gusen I and II, 24 tons of dynamite would be detonated at the entrances, and all would be sealed inside.40 The variety in the orders emanating from Berlin has done much to confuse the issue. We have seen that Ziereis had received an order from Pohl in February 1945 calling for the extermination of every single prisoner. On 12 March, however, Himmler was in the SS sanatorium at Hohenlychen when he signed a document, countersigned by his physician Dr. Felix Kersten, entitled ‘Agreement in the name of humanity’. Under the agreement, the concentration camps would not be blown up, and no more Jews would be killed. On 14 April, nevertheless, Himmler telephoned

186 GROWING FEARS OF A GENERAL MASSACRE

Ziereis—the telephone recording has been found—to repeat that no prisoner was to fall into enemy hands alive (‘kein Häftling darf lebendig in die Hände des Feindes fallen’).41 On the night of 23–4 April, Himmler met Count Bernadotte in Lubeck and admitted that Germany was beaten, but the next morning he repeated his order to Pohl that every last prisoner be executed. Ziereis, like any other camp commandant, had the duty to carry out whatever was the most recent order of his superiors, but in the case of Gusen II more than the SS was involved. It is reasonable to suppose that the decision was worked out by a combination of very high-ranking leaders who included not only those of the Gestapo and DEST but also Bormann, Speer, Messerschmitt and the Luftwaffe. Now that Goering had been dismissed (on 26 April), the Luftwaffe was under the command of Robert von Greim, who flew from Munich to Berlin to receive his field marshal’s baton and then flew back south the same day, reaching Zell am See, south of Salzburg. Von Greim undoubtedly knew all about Gusen II, but he would never be brought to trial. Captured by US forces, he was in prison in Salzburg on 24 May when he committed suicide.

16 The evacuation of the last Nebenlager

The transfer westwards of Mauthausen’s subsidiaries in the east was part of the general order given by Ziereis on 31 March for the evacuation not only of Nebenlager in the Vienna area but also those at Melk and St Ägyd. The evacuation was entrusted to Streitwieser, who had been given command of several Kommandos in the Vienna area.1 The inmates of these Kommandos were congregated at Hinterbrühl, south of Vienna, and on the following morning, Easter Sunday, Streitwieser was ready to march them to Mauthausen. Before leaving, on the Saturday night, he ordered a number of prisoner-physicians to administer benzene injections to the 54 prisoners who were unable to walk. Every one of them refused, but Streitwieser knew that there would always be willing hands at some lower level of humanity to do his bidding. Indeed, the German red-triangle Georg Goessl, who was Kapo of the local Revier, did not refuse the order, while the male nurse Karl Sasko, a Green from Vienna, offered his assistance. The injections were supposed to be intracardiac, but Goessl and Sasko lacked experience: most of the time they injected the benzene into the lungs, causing the victim a long and atrocious agony. Goessl cleaned up his mess by strangling those who lingered. The next morning, Streitwieser realized that he was desperately short of guards: he had just 12 SS left. He therefore decided to enrol German and Spanish Kapos and certain German and Spanish Prominenten. The Spaniards refused en bloc, whereupon Streitwieser ordered up two machine-guns, trained them on the Spaniards, and gave them ten minutes to decide. In the end the Spaniards yielded. A few were given rifles, the rest clubs. It was a perfect opportunity for a mass breakout, but for reasons not clearly known it was not tried, or at least did not succeed. The column set out, the doctors who had refused the order the night before serving as grave-diggers at the back, and the SS in strategic positions all around. Every day they had to cover some 30 kilometres, with Streitwieser, riding in a red car with his servant Max Ramón, deciding the stops. Two Frenchmen moved to the support of a third who could walk no further. The SS spotted them, ordered them out of the ranks, shot all three in the mouth, and threw the bodies in a ditch. So it continued. On the fourth and fifth days, a torrential downpour turned the road into a marsh. When they reached a bridge over the Danube a short distance from Mauthausen, some prisoners threw themselves into the river and drowned. The column reached

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Mauthausen at 4 p.m. on 7 April. In seven days of marching, 160 prisoners had died, of whom 131 were shot.2 In another, and longer, evacuation to Mauthausen which lasted eight days, the break-outs led on the second day to the elimination of the stops. From then on, the prisoners were covering the 30-kilometre daily march without food or water.3 In southern Austria, in the Graz region, the prisoners in the Hinterberg Kommando found on 2 April that they were not leaving as usual to excavate the tunnels. Their commandant, SS-Untersturmführer Mirov, issued each inmate with a loaf of bread and began marching them to the Mutterlager. The account of their journey is the replication of a theme. To hold a whole loaf in one’s hand proved too much of a temptation. The prisoners ate too much too quickly; their stomachs churned, and they began leaving the column to squat on the edge of the road. Since any prisoner who stopped received a bullet, the SS guards made no exception for their condition and shot them as they squatted. This forced the rest to satisfy their physical needs as they marched.4 Meanwhile, of the 403 prisoners in Floridsdorf on 13 April, 394 had been exterminated by 19 April; the nine survivors were transferred to Mauthausen, two on 15 April and seven on 19 April.5 Mauthausen continued to serve as the last depository of every abandoned camp. On the eve of Dachau’s liberation on 29 April, a convoy of 4800 prisoners set out with the same destination; only 180 arrived.6 On 4 May, only 24 hours before Mauthausen was liberated, another 397 women arrived from the Freiberg Kommando, a subsidiary of KL-Flossenbürg.7 The very last camp to be evacuated was Schlier, at Redl-Zipf, which a little earlier had been reinforced by the arrival of some 250 Spaniards evacuated from the Kommando at Ternberg. About 100 Spaniards were subsequently transferred to Gusen II, but at the time that Schlier was evacuated (and then burnt) on 1–3 May 1945, the camp population consisted of 60 Spaniards, 20 Italians, nine Frenchmen, one Belgian, and an unknown number of Germans. All the Kapos were ordered to remain behind to assist the SS in destroying the camp. The Spaniards at Redl-Zipf were the remainder of the César Kommando which had been transferred there in December 1944. Among them was the Catalan anarchist Francesc Comellas, who affirms that on 1 May, as his group was lined up in preparation for the march to Ebensee, a staff car drove up containing only the chauffeur and a passenger. The man who alighted, and who walked in front of them on his way to the commandant’s office, was none other than the Reichsführer-SS. A number of the prisoners had seen pictures of Himmler in the German press, and they agreed with Comellas that there could be no mistake.8 But there was; on 1 May, Himmler was wanted for treason. The evacuation of Schlier meant the end of the great counterfeit project. On 3 May some 80 cases of counterfeit sterling and dollars were loaded into trucks and taken to the Zipfer brewery where they were hidden in its caves or dropped in Lake Attersee. The tiny subsection of Kommando Schlier then left on foot for Ebensee. Meanwhile, the rest of the Kommando was marched along the road toward Schörfling. The prisoners knew they were close to the counterfeit Kommando and knew all about their work. They strongly suspected that every one of the prisoner-

THE EVACUATION OF THE LAST NEBENLAGER 189

counterfeiters would be murdered, not evacuated. The fact that many and even most of them were Jewish seemed to seal their fate. The survivor Francesc Comellas recounts the closing moments: ‘On the first night we stopped between Lenzing9 and Schörfling. On 2 May we reached Attersee,10 and proceeded down its eastern shore, stopping near Seefeld. We knew the Jewish Kommando was close behind. Our Kapo was the Spaniard Martínez, a good man. He arranged with the Kommandoführer (whom we called “el Tirolés”) that we would wait beside the road and allow the Jewish unit to overtake us. In this we had the support of our SS guards, who were Yugoslav and Romanian. Our own motive was our fear that the SS guarding the Jews were wounded veterans of the eastern front and far worse than ours. It did not work as we hoped. The Jewish Kommando was ordered to stop at the place where they reached us. Its Kommandoführer was senior in rank to our own and he ordered us to resume the march, under him. We remained seated. Our own guards shouted to us to move, but still we didn’t move, watching to see if the other guards levelled their guns at us. They didn’t, and they marched off with the Jews, with our group now in the rear. We stopped at Weissenbach am Attersee, where the SS guarding our particular group fell asleep. My friend José Carreras, from Gerona, told me he intended to head for a wooded hill to the south. López Árias and I joined him, and we all reached the hill and stayed hidden until the arrival of the Americans shortly after. A Mexican-American served as our interpreter.’11 Other survivors of the march offer a different account, no doubt because the prisoners were not kept in a single group. To avoid the counterfeit Kommando and the prospect of sharing their fate, they report, they took the unusual step of increasing the pace of march, with the result that they overtaxed the strength of the SS escort, made up as it was of elderly men; by the time the convoy reached the end of the lake there were only two guards left, the remainder having dropped out or fled. As for the counterfeit Kommando, it was not exterminated, either because the SS escort fled after it reached Weissenbach or because the prisoners were liberated by the Americans at Ebensee on 6 May.12 As for the counterfeit money, not all of it was buried in Redl-Zipf or dropped in Attersee. An undisclosed amount was recovered on 25 May 1945 in the village of Walchen, only five kilometres south of Redl, by the US 307th CIC Detachment.13 Francesc Comellas, who is married to an Austrian and has lived in the Linz area ever since the Liberation, is convinced that part at least was thrown into one of the two little lakes in the Tauplitz, north-east of Bad Mitterndorf. This, at the eastern end of the Totes Gebirge, happens to be in the area chosen by Kaltenbrunner as his hiding place. The liquidations continued more frenetically than ever. Nazi Germany, the ultimate empire of hate incarnate, was going down, but it was resolved to take with it those who hated and despised it most. In the final days, most of those whose death sentences had been postponed, for one reason or another, were liquidated. The execution at this late date of some 40 Nacht und Nebel Austrians, some of them already prisoners and in the AMI, others transferred to Mauthausen for the purpose, was an event that lingered in the memory of the survivors. In defence of the communist leadership of the international committee, Miguel Malle writes that the

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committee decided to place at their disposal a few pistols and grenades. These reached the condemned men, but the Austrians refused to use them—which required the AMI to recover them at once. They preferred instead to resign themselves calmly to their death, no doubt in the belief that any resistance on their part would result in a massacre of the rest.14 Even after the Führer’s death, those suspected of complicity in the July bomb plot were still being executed at Mauthausen.15 However fast the prisoners were being liquidated, the Blocks were still insufficient to accommodate all those who were arriving from the outlying Kommandos, so the Kapos made them lie, head to tail, on straw thrown on the floor. As for the Revier, it was now the scene of indescribable squalor, with 8000 sick sleeping as many as five to a bed16 and with occasional cases of cannibalism.17 A survivor has described the scene. Day and night the collective groaning of the dying, the screams of the wounded as gangrene spread across their limbs, the sobs of the starving begging for anything, from time to time the creaking of the death-cart dragged by two Poles who collected the bodies, and over everything the fetid, perfervid smell of filth as the motionless living entwined with the dead. Almost everyone around him, he found, was injured in the feet or ankles, for almost all had been working in the quarry. It was the rocks that had caused their wounds, the steps their injuries, as their exhausted legs twisted under the weight of the rock. The denial of medical treatment had achieved the rest: the wounds became infected until the flesh rotted and came away from the bones. More than 3000 of these men were then transferred to the Blocks of Camp III, at the south-eastern end of the camp, where there was no water or sanitation at all.18 Jean Benech, the only French doctor to remain in the camp after the French inmates had been given the opportunity in April to be repatriated, has described the scene he faced: while the sluice no longer functioned, a volume of unregulated water ran into the latrines and carried the filth over the ground, for prisoners to splash through in their bare feet. Some 800 of those transferred to Camp III were led to the gas chamber and put to death. The remainder were left without palliasses and given no food at all. The collapse of discipline served to revive old hatreds among the various national groups. Once again it was the Spaniards who, in the view of a non-Spaniard, behaved the best and contributed the most to a reduction in the tension.19 The SS still hesitated to initiate a massacre, for fear of the reaction of the mass.20 Nor were the officers entirely sure of their troops, since too many of them had only recently been inducted, and by force. This vital matter was known to the Resistance: some SS were saying they were opposed to such inhuman action, others that if it occurred they would fight on the other side, and others promised the Resistance that if the decision were taken they would at once make it known. While all this was reassuring, there were nevertheless reports that large quantities of gas had arrived in Mauthausen and that the SS had reinforced their night watch. Starvation and exhaustion now took an unprecedented toll, since no more food supplies were delivered to the camp. No fewer than 4147 prisoners died in the week before the Liberation.21 In addition to the hundreds who died each day of ‘natural’ causes, some 500 or 600 exhausted prisoners were sent daily to the gas chamber.22

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Since the crematoria were incapable of handling such a quantity of corpses, the bodies piled up in pyramids, and enormous ditches had to be dug to bury them. At the same time, the Nazis could no longer conceal their own predicament, when thousands of prisoners were now assigned to digging fortifications around the village and camp of Mauthausen; a few days later these same fortifications would be manned by the prisoners themselves.23 Their predicament was further seen in the way they began the destruction of the material evidence, first by murdering the prisoners they had employed in the gas chamber and the crematoria,24 then throwing all the SS records into the crematoria—this order, originating from Glücks, was passed down by Niedermayer to Ramón Bargueño and the other two Spaniards working under him in the Bunker25—and finally, on 24 April, by attempting to destroy the gas chamber and the crematoria themselves.26 It is probable that the SS would still have set about liquidating the entire camp population if they had not feared for their personal safety. No doubt they suspected that several prisoners were armed and resolute. In fact, the lack of arms was the prisoners’ main concern: the Spaniards had only two pistols, some knives, and some cudgels.27 Add to that the Minimax fire-extinguishers—each Block had two—which could blind a sentry, together with an assortment of rubber gloves, wire-cutters, ladders, axes, ropes, and grappling hooks.28 But the claim that they had much more seems to be an example of deliberate untruth.29 In any event, the SS had received their orders to engage in what was to most of them a novel experience: military combat. For years they had lived the pretence of being Übermenschen among Untermenschen. Now came the chance to prove it.

17 The photos and the Poschacher boys

In the Erkennungsdienst, on the day that Hitler died, Schinlauer, his shoulders drooping with dejection, came in whimpering like a child: ‘Our Führer is dead!’ Antonio García, to whom he said it, maintained the necessary blank look. Meanwhile, Ziereis had received the order to destroy all the negatives, and passed the order on to Ricken. The work took three days, at the end of which Ricken reported to Ziereis that the entire collection had been destroyed.1 But however closely Ricken supervised the destruction, the opportunity came, when he left for lunch and Schinlauer was absent, to slip photos or negatives out of the lab. The photographic equipment was dismantled, and the darkroom was turned into a bathroom, which it originally had been. On the last day, Ricken spent the entire morning walking around the bare front room, saying nothing. Then he held out his hand to García, who took it. He then did the same to the other prisoners in the photo lab. ‘You are free men,’ he said, and left, in the middle of the day. García and Boix looked at one another in silence, sharing the same single thought: the survival of the photographs. García had been able to retrieve, from various hiding places, some forty prints of 36×24 mm, but the bulk of his collection had disappeared. What had happened to the photos when García fell sick and was taken to the Revier in February 1945? According to the communist version of events, the initiative was taken by Felipe Yébenes Romo, one of the Spaniards working in the Friseur Kommando as barber of the SS, and secretary of the secret organization. In 1942, Yébenes asked Boix to examine the possibilities of removing negatives from the Erkennungsdienst so that they could be secreted from the camp and concealed in some place outside. The Party does not claim that Boix made any move to do this before García entered the Revier in February 1945, and it is most unlikely that he did, since García would have discovered it. There was no ideological factor involved: all those who took part were communist, or Stalinist as García puts it, and remained so for a long time afterwards, but the Party, which is always happiest when the details are blurred, has never produced a coherent account of how the photos were transported to safety, and individual communists took the opportunity later to magnify their personal contribution. The photos in question comprise most of García’s prints together with a number of negatives stolen from the SS archives. It is almost certain that the Spanish communist leaders decided to divide the photos up and conceal them in more places than one; it is also possible that the photos were

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moved from place to place. According to several sources, some at least were passed next door to the disinfection Kommando, to be sewn into garments. Others were reportedly passed to José Perlado, who worked in the joiners’ workshop (Schreinerei), also next door, and he in turn passed them on to the clockmaker Marcelo Rodríguez in Block 11, who knew how to hide them.2 An equally popular account holds that the photos were passed to Ramón Bargueño, the Kapo of the Bunker, and according to Bargueño’s own account he held them for two weeks.3 These accounts involving Rodríguez and Bargueño imply that the prisoners took the risk of carrying the photos into the fortress through the main gate, instead of burying them somewhere outside the fortress, and Juan de Diego mocks the pretensions of Bargueño, while admitting that he may have hidden them in the Bunker for one or two days. Bargueño for his part does not yield, however improbable it may seem that the custody of these all-important photographs should be entrusted to a prisoner assigned to Mauthausen’s inner prison, where the very few who had access to it were subject to constant search. Bargueño claims that the whole collection of prints and negatives, and not merely part of it, was passed to him by Boix, and that he hid it in a small rucksack placed in the crevice of a chimney in the crematorium; this was not the chimney of the incinerator, but an unused chimney free from heat in the room of the Kremaführer, in a crevice high enough to be out of sight and which had previously been used to hide a radio.4 In any event, it was decided very quickly that the material would be safer if it were transferred to the Poschacher Kommando, which, as we have seen, worked in Mauthausen village, and by them to some Austrian antiNazi civilian who could be trusted totally. The discipline under which the Poschacherjugend worked had been steadily relaxed. The original escort of an SS officer and four men had been reduced in 1944 to a single SS sergeant, who warned them that if a single youth took advantage of this the whole group, and even the entire Spanish contingent in Mauthausen, would pass through the ringer. In the closing months they had no escort at all, and a few were even billeted at night in various units outside the camp.5 The rest continued to sleep in their Block inside the fortress, marching out and back each day. The warning was more explicit than ever: they were to make no mischief, and they would be left alone. Certainly they contemplated escape, but how, and to what end? Their home was the fortress. Every night they could compare their freedom with that of thousands of the Lager’s inmates who were nearer each day to death. In the village quarry where they worked, they mixed to some extent with the Austrian civilians who worked there too, and in the final period some were free even to enter a café in the village. Nevertheless, speaking to the Austrian civilians was too dangerous; they would reply when spoken to, but always in the noncommittal way which was every prisoner’s best hope for survival. The result was that the Spanish boys who made up the Poschacher Kommando had come to know something of the village. The quarry where most of them worked lay on the north side of the Vormarktstrasse leading from the village to the station, while the hut where they had their lunch lay on the south side. The houses in the immediate vicinity became more familiar. There was the Gasthaus Erika, the café at

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Vormarkt no. 4 which some could enter, and where they discovered that Erika, the owner, was the mistress of Mauthausen’s Rapportführer Kofler.6 Closer to the village was a garage owned by Franz Hatel, who employed two Spanish prisoners who were not in the Poschacher Kommando, which shows that some Mauthausen prisoners, at least towards the end, were being farmed out to private businesses which were of special importance.7 Hatel’s business was modest, but it was his transport that delivered the food supplies to the Hauptlager.8 Between the garage and the Gasthaus, at Vormarkt no. 12, was the home of the Pointner family, made up of Michael and Anna and their three daughters. This stood on the road opposite the hut where the boys had their lunch, and behind the house, on a grassy hillock close to the quarry, the boys could occasionally sit and rest. Anna Pointner was among the Austrians who had been sickened by the Anschluss. Her daughter Leopoldine Drexler, whom the author first visited in May 1995, had this to say about her mother: ‘No, she wasn’t Catholic at all. After what she saw in 1933, and especially in 1938, with Cardinal Innitzer and the alliance of Church and Nazi Party, she wanted nothing more to do with the Catholic Church. My father, who was a socialist, was the goods superintendent at the station here, and witnessed the arrival of many a convoy. He was accused of watching what he was forbidden to watch. He and four other railway employees were denounced by a Nazi fellow-worker and arrested by the Sturmabteilung. They took him up to the Lager, and for three days and two nights they beat him while they questioned him. Then they sent him to prison in Linz, where for six weeks he was interrogated by the Gestapo. This was not a secret. On his release, the whole village knew what had happened to him.’9 It was therefore in full knowledge of the risks she ran that Anna Pointner, with the utmost discretion, made contact with boys from the Poschacherjugend. Like many others, Anna Pointner was moved to pity by her glimpse of the prisoners as the incoming convoys tramped directly past her house, and felt the same pity for the Spanish youths whose daily activities took place in front and around her. Like one or two others, she would throw apples out of the windows, knowing full well that merely to glance out of the windows when prisoners were passing by could bring the direst punishment. Anna Pointner then dared further. She began to give the boys manual signs, and finally exchanged a word or two. The moment came. One of the boys spoke to her of a packet, perhaps two, pointing his meaning with his fingers. Would she hide the packets? She knew the risk to her whole family, she looked hard at him, and she calmly said she would. The Spanish network inside the fortress now selected two of the boys, Jacinto Cortés and Jesús Grau, both communists in the Catalan JSUC, to be the couriers of the precious photographs, since these two had the job of carrying the lunch food each day from the camp to the village.10 A false bottom was fitted into the food hamper that they carried,11 and the photographs were then delivered to the hut on the river side of the road which the Poschacher quarry Kommando used as a shelter and a place to eat. From there they were passed, with every precaution taken, to the waiting Anna Pointner, who had already prepared the hiding place. Her house was

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eminently suited for concealment, because the high stone wall behind it could not be seen from any other building; if today the narrow lane between house and wall is a passage, at that time it was blocked by a wall at the far end. The packets containing the photos were not very large, the rocks in the wall could be prised open, and the rock into which they were inserted was resealed without any telltale marks at all. Anna Pointner nevertheless kept the secret to herself. No member of her family was told. Even when after the war the photos were picked up, she still waited a year before breaking the news.

18 The departure of the SS

The fiction that the SS were leaving the Hauptlager to fight the enemy was soon transparent. Mauthausen had become virtually the last refuge for Nazi fugitives fleeing from east, west, north, and south. Elegant limousines arrived from Vienna, carrying Nazi officials and their women draped in sumptuous fur blankets.1 On the night of 2–3 May, a party was held in the anteroom of the prison. Ramón Bargueño, a witness, since he and two other Spaniards had been ordered now to sleep in the prison,2 has described the scene. Niedermayer, who ruled the prison, served as host, and the party was attended by Schulz’s group from the Politische Abteilung, the SS from the crematorium and the gas chamber, and the SS women guards from Ravensbrück. At about midnight Niedermayer brought Bargueño four bottles of liquor and ordered him to prepare a punch. When he arrived in the anteroom with the punch, he found all of them stark naked. They were delighted to see the punch, and offered him some. As morning approached, the SS made their way out as best they could, but not before shooting at the portraits of SS generals hanging on the walls of the anteroom. Niedermayer, his voice slurred from drink, threw a ring of keys at Bargueño’s feet, shouted, ‘Du, Kommandoführer!’, and left.3 On the same night of 2–3 May, individual SS members began deserting the Lager, dressed in civilian clothes. Others followed on the morning of 3 May, in groups and in uniform, both in Mauthausen and in Gusen. Their pretext was that they were off to fight the Russians. In fact, it was only a very small part of the Mauthausen garrison that led its ‘Afrikakorps’ into line against the Red Army, and there is no evidence that it fought an actual engagement either with the Russians or with the Americans. The rest, led by the senior officers, fled to the woods or mountains, either taking their families or abandoning them. As for Ziereis, he stayed just long enough to hand over the command of KLMauthausen and Gusen to Hauptmann Kern, who arrived on 3 May at the head of a police formation of the Vienna fire brigade.4 While any unit was preferable to the SS from the prisoner’s standpoint, most of the Vienna firemen were Nazis, exempted from front-line duty and eager to show their loyalty in exchange. Now they were forced to wear SS uniform without having entered the SS.5 That afternoon, Ramón Bargueño and the other two Spaniards working in the Bunker were ordered to carry the suitcases of the SS officers to cars waiting nearby. The

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officers would now show the way. ‘Meine Ehre heisst Treue’ (‘My honour is called loyalty’), the sacred motto of the SS, had entered oblivion. For the last several months, Ziereis had been drinking more and more, which made him all the more dangerous. At the same time he had neglected both his Lager and his family to live with August Eigruber, the Gauleiter of Oberdonau, quartered in Linz. It was the renewal of an old friendship: it was Eigruber who had proposed Ziereis for his last promotion and for the award of the Silver Cross. They had been travelling between Linz and Vienna, drinking and visiting brothels, in a vain attempt to escape the hell they had created. On the morning of 3 May,6 Ziereis ordered his wife Ida to pack the bags. With her three children she got into their limousine and found Schulz and his mistress, the typist Neugebauer, already inside. Later, to her horror, Ida Ziereis also found, hidden under blankets, Schulz’s prisoner-servant, the Czech Johan Krutis. They drove to the Pyhrn Pass near Spital, and stopped at Ziereis’ hunting lodge. In the baskets they had brought there was enough food for several days. The next day Schulz announced that he intended to return to Mauthausen. His secretary and prisoner-servant disappeared a few days later. As for Ziereis, he appeared and disappeared without any explanation.7 Schulz’s decision to return to Mauthausen might have been an expression of remorse. Whether he knew it or not, his flight had been a grievous disappointment to the subordinates who trusted him, and a portrait of him had been ripped from an office wall and smashed.8 Alternatively, but less probably, he was concerned about his wife and children. In any event, when he arrived, he found the camp in American hands. He then made use of the uniform of an SS-Unterscharführer and false papers in the name of Kurt Müller. In the company of one of his maids he drove to a friend’s house in Bad Ischl. He was suffering from severe stomach cramps, but under his false identity he succeeded in getting treatment in an American hospital train which took him to Heidelberg. In Heidelberg, he entered a clinic and found a cure. The Bird of Death walked out a free man.9 In the case of Bachmayer, the collapse of Nazi Germany came as a shock. Walking into the Schreibstube, he put the pathetic question to Juan de Diego: ‘What’s going to happen to my wife?’ De Diego did not reply. Bachmayer repeated his question, then broke down and cried on de Diego’s shoulder. The next day they met for the last time, outside the main gate. Bachmayer was about to leave, not in the chauffeured car that befitted a Schutzhaftlagerführer but instead riding the superb motor-sidecar which was his pride and joy. Outside the main gate, he summoned de Diego. ‘Hans,’ he said, ‘what do you think of all this? What lies ahead?’ De Diego replied: ‘For you, the night. For us, the day.’ Bachmayer eyed him closely. How many helpless prisoners had been shot dead by the ‘Bloody Gypsy’ merely by catching his eyes? De Diego remained calm. Bachmayer was wearing white gloves. He now took one of them off to shake hands with his Dritte Lagerschreiber. ‘Good luck to you, Spaniard,’ he said. He then left the Lager, met his wife and his young twin daughters in the house near Schwertberg where they had taken refuge, and drove to Altenburg, near Perg. There, in the tradition set by Josef Goebbels, Bachmayer blew out the brains of his wife and children before

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turning the weapon on himself.10 Dr Rudolf Lonauer, the director of Hartheim, followed suit on 5 May.11 Meanwhile in the Lager on 3 May, it was a time of extreme ambiguity. When Bargueño and his two comrades returned to the Bunker after carrying the suitcases of the SS officers, they found a Vienna police officer left in charge. He was weeping and insisting that he was innocent of the crimes committed there. The Spaniards, who had picked up the keys of the cells left lying on the ground by the departing SS, disarmed him and told him to leave. The AMI was now poised to strike, but only in self-defence: there were still enough SS in the camp to make any confrontation suicidal for the prisoners.12 The departure of the remainder of the SS was conducted with such stealth that the fact was not known by the prisoners until the following morning, 4 May. The international committee at once delegated two of its members, the Austrians Dr Heinrich Dürmayer and Hans Maršálek, to try to win a promise from Hauptmann Kern to keep all guards outside the inner camp. That afternoon, members of the international committee attempted to take charge of the internal administration of the camp. Despite the later claim of communist writers, they failed, because Maršálek himself admits that the Vienna fire brigade retained control of both the fortress and the outlying Sanitätslager.13 On the other hand, Kern gave a promise that he would defend the camp against any attempt by the SS to force its way back inside. On this question the prisoners were not reassured,14 for it was known that SS guards had joined forces with Waffen-SS units, that they were in strength and not far off, along the Enns river on the right bank of the Danube. The SS units might well fall back in retreat, and with tanks and flame-throwers set about the final massacre. In such a situation the international committee could not trust in the good intentions of Hauptmann Kern, and if the police refused to hand over their arms the prisoners resolved to seize them.15 On the same day, 4 May, Haefliger of the CICR also spoke with Hauptmann Kern, and with the help of Reimer he obtained a car from the SS garage, had it repainted white with a conspicuous red cross, and received a Red Cross flag from the prisoners in the tailors’ shop who had sewn it for him. Haefliger now invited Reimer to come with him. On 5 May, he and Reimer, with an SS driver, left the camp at dawn, without informing the prisoners’ international committee. Haefliger’s purpose was to make for Linz and return with a force of US troops,16 but it was also to alert the Americans to the grave danger that confronted all those in St Georgen. Curiously enough, both Reimer and the driver were still wearing SS uniforms. The only precaution taken, at Haefliger’s suggestion, was to remove the Death’s Head from the cap.17 In the Gusen complex, most of the SS had left by the morning of 5 May.18 The Spaniard Marceline López, in his post as waiter in the SS privates’ mess, was told by an SS sergeant who was about to flee: ‘We know Seidler’s plan to exterminate all the prisoners and all the Austrian civilians in Gusen since they are witnesses to everything that’s happened, and we refuse to take part in it.’19 As for Seidler, his departure apparently coincided with that of Ziereis, who was heading south but

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Plate 12 Major-General Holmes E.Dager, commanding US 11th Armored Division (‘Thunderbolt’). By courtesy of Lieutenant Colonel Milton W.Reach.

Plate 13 Three battalion commanders in US 11th Armored Division: (seated, from left to right), Lt. Col. James R.Brady (63rd), Lt. Col. Frederick K.Hearn (55th), and Lt. Col. Milton W.Reach (21st); (standing) Capt. Long (63rd), Maj. Hill Blalock (55th), Maj. Charles R.Sandler (21st), unidentified. By courtesy of Milton W.Keach.

through Langenstein and Linz. On his death-bed, Ziereis, ill-placed to speak of cowardice, branded Seidler a coward. Seidler had given Ziereis to understand that he was leading an SS force against the Americans. Ziereis watched the unit through his field glasses, and instead of fighting the Americans, Seidler let his men surrender without firing a shot, while he too followed the lead of Goebbels, murdering his wife and children before killing himself with a bullet to the brain.20 The last victims of the KZ system were thus the innocent children of the assassins.

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Plate 14 St Georgen, Austria, 5 May 1945. S/Sgt Robert Sellers, commanding 3rd half-track in the patrol under S/Sgt Leander W.Hens, meets Red Cross representative Louis Haefliger (in hat) in front of the entrance to the Bergkristall tunnels. Clockwise from bottom left facing car: Frank Kissel (Omaha, Nebraska), Joe Wahoo Jackson (Klamath Falls, Oregon), Horace Hall (home unknown), Robert Sellers (Spokane, Washington), Conrad Rienstra (Litchville, North Dakota), James S.Pike (Redding, California), Gale Calhoun (home unknown). By courtesy of Martha Gammer.

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Plate 15 The four American patrol leaders to reach Mauthausen on 5 May 1945. Clockwise from top left: S/Sgt Albert J.Kosiek (Chicago, Illinois); Harry Saunders (Port Angeles, Washington), in front, with John L.Slatton (top) and Marvin Stark (right); S/Sgt Edward A.Bergh (Bellevue, Washington); S/Sgt Leander W.Hens (Belgrade, Minnesota).

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Plate 16 The first US troops enter Mauthausen, 5 May 1945. S/Sgt Harry Saunders’ armoured car enters through the garage gate, with Saunders standing, John L.Slatton, gunner on turret, and Marvin Stark, driver. Photograph by Francesc Boix; courtesy of Pierre-Serge Choumoff.

Plate 17 Mauthausen, 6 May 1945. A tank of the US 21st Armored Infantry Battalion enters the fortress through the main gate, under the banner painted by the Spaniards: ‘The Spanish Antifascists Greet the Liberating Forces.’ Photograph by Henri Boussel; by courtesy of USHMM.

Part IV Liberation

‘Los españoles antifascistas saludan a las fuerzas libertadoras’*

1 The Soviet assault from the east

At the time the Allied invasion of Austria began, in early April 1945, one half of Germany was already in Allied hands and the Battle of Berlin was about to begin. Austria was to be invaded from the east (by the Soviets), from the north-west (by the Americans), from the west (by the Americans and the French), and from the south (by the British and the Yugoslavs). The first and overwhelming pressure came from the east, which eased the task of the Americans, but there was to be some stiff resistance in Oberdonau. To the west, in the Tyrol, and to the south, in Carinthia, the fighting was relatively insignificant. It is a tribute to the Soviet and US forces in Austria that the Wehrmacht never had the chance, or the will, to withdraw to the ‘Kernfestung Alpen’, the ultimate Alpine redoubt of Nazi Germany which, on Hitler’s orders, was to be so well provisioned that it could accommodate all three of the German fronts capable of reaching it: OB Southwest (Italy), defended by Army Group C, OB Southeast (Balkans), defended by Army Group E, and OB West (whose Army Group G alone could attain it).1 The vast Alpine fortress extended from Füsse in Bavaria to Dravograd in Slovenia, and from Steyr in Oberdonau to Riva (southwest of Trento) in Italy, leaving Vienna and Linz outside, but an outer wall to protect Vienna was established in the east from Trieste on the Adriatic to Breslau in Poland. Advancing into eastern Austria (Niederdonau and Burgenland) were two Soviet army groups: Malinovsky’s 2nd Ukrainian Front to the north and Tolbukhin’s 3rd Ukrainian Front to the south. As the thrust of these two Soviet army groups was to the north-west, it would be Tolbukhin’s army group that was to advance up the Danube. It goes without saying that the structure and composition of the German forces in Austria in the month of April 1945 went through important changes, precisely as a result of the enormous losses sustained by the Wehrmacht on its eastern front. As the month opened, those forces, under the supreme command of Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring (who had hitherto held the supreme command on both the southwestern and western fronts), consisted of three army groups (Heeresgruppen). Heeresgruppe G in the Tyrol, where the fighting was the least intense, came under the command of General der Gebirgstruppen Georg Ritter von Hengl and consisted of two armies, the 1st and the 19th, which had previously fought together as Army

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Group G in the retreat from Southern France. It included two SS divisions: the 17th SS-Panzer-Grenadier-Division (‘Götz von Berlichingen’), commanded by SSOberführer Bochmann, and the 38th SS-Panzer-Grenadier Division (‘Nibelungen’) which had only just been formed (in March 1945) out of Himmler’s bodyguard battalion and 8000 17-year-old members of Hitlerjugend; its command passed to SS-Gruppenführer Heinz Lammerding2 and ultimately to SS-Standartenführer Stange. Heeresgruppe E, under Generaloberst Alexander Löhr, entered the Austrian theatre only when it retreated from the Balkans. It included only one SS division, the 7th SS-Gebirgs (Mountain) Division (‘Prinz Eugen’), commanded by SSOberführer Schmidhuber. The main battle force, Heeresgruppe Süd, was placed under the command of General der Infanterie Otto Wöhler. Wöhler’s army group consisted of four armies: the 2nd Panzer, the 6th Panzer, the 6th and the 8th. The 6th Panzer Army, under Hitler’s favourite general, SSOberstgruppenführer Sepp Dietrich,3 was assigned to the north of Vienna and included four SS Panzer divisions (the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 12th), and the only brigade left of the 37th. The 6th Army, under General der Panzertruppen Hermann Balck, was positioned to the south of Vienna and included one SS Panzer division, the 5th. The 2nd Panzer Army, commanded by General der Artillerie Maximilian de Angelis, was stationed further to the south, in Styria and Carinthia, and included four SS divisions: the 9th Panzer, the 13th Gebirgs (Mountain), and the 14th and 16th Panzer-Grenadier. Finally, the 8th Army, under General der Gebirgstruppen Hans von Kreysing, with no SS divisions, was positioned north of the Danube, along the length of the Czechoslovak border. While the present study gives prominence to the role played by the SS divisions, it should not be supposed that SS divisions were in every case the most distinguished of those fighting for Hitler, though many of them were. A post-war study by General Geyr von Schweppenburg, commander of Panzergruppe West in the battle of Normandy, selected only three SS-Panzer divisions (9th, 12th, and 2nd) among the top seven of the Panzer divisions he had commanded, but all three of these were now in Austria. The Panzer he graded lowest of the eleven on his list was also in Austria, and was none other than 1st SS-Panzer Division (‘Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler’), whose discipline he considered ‘trash’, but precisely because it had been bled white in Russia.4 The problem of attrition was common to all the SS divisions still in action. As the battle for Austria opened, of a total of 15 SS divisions in that theatre, only seven (2nd, 7th, 13th, 14th, 16th, 17th and 38th) were more or less intact, and only four of these (2nd, 13th, 14th and 16th) were in the main force defending the heartland (Niederdonau and Oberdonau).5 By 4 April, the Soviet armies had encircled Vienna except for the north along the Danube. On 6 April, to the south-east of the city, Schwechat and then Simmering fell, and on the same day Soviet artillery opened up on the capital. On 9 April, August Eigruber, the Gauleiter of Oberdonau, proved once again worthy of his reputation as the most merciless of Austria’s political administrators. On that day, he announced that all political leaders and government officials of the Vienna Reichsgau, with the single exception of those who held a warrant from the Gauleiter

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of Vienna (Reichsvertigungskommissar Baldur von Schirach), if found in his Oberdonau were to be arrested on the spot: ‘All such persons are to be interned in a building set aside for this purpose, which I have indicated to the Gestapo. The drumhead court-martial of Oberdonau is empowered to pass judgement on all such fugitives.’6 The battle for Vienna was to be marked neither by a desperate Nazi defence comparable with that of Budapest (or later of Berlin) nor by an uprising of the Austrian Resistance. Its leaders in the Wehrmacht (Major Karl Biedermann, Hauptmann Alfred Huth, and Oberleutnant Rudolf Raschke) were arrested on 6 April, sentenced to death on 8 April by a court-martial of the IInd SS-Panzerkorps (commanded by SS-Obergruppenführer Wilhelm Bittrich), and hanged in Floridsdorf.7 This was apparently enough to cool the ardour for an uprising, but some isolated incidents could not have improved the Wehrmacht’s morale. It was in Floridsdorf that hot water was poured from the top floor of houses on troops of the Führer-Grenadier-Division as they advanced to engage the Red Army. Similarly, when Wehrmacht troops tried to enter people’s homes to take up positions for street fighting, they were refused entry, and when Austrian and other soldiers asked the help of civilians to change out of their Wehrmacht uniforms they were very quickly provided with civilian clothes.8 Desertion was still dangerous in the extreme. On 6 April 1945, Hitler dismissed Wöhler, appointing in his place Generaloberst Dr Lothar Rendulic.9 Once again, any such change of command was intended to stiffen German resistance, and on 15 April Rendulic ordered that any soldier who was found detached from his unit and had not been wounded was to be shot on the spot.10 But by then Vienna was already lost. On the morning of 13 April, when the situation was already hopeless, Rudolf von Bünau, the garrison commandant of Vienna, was given command of the capital’s defences. Bittrich’s famed IInd SS-Panzerkorps, which included the 2nd SSPanzer Division (‘Das Reich’) under SS-Standartenführer Rudolf Lehmann,11 was fighting its last battle as an integrated corps. ‘Das Reich’, together with the 3rd SSPanzer Division (‘Totenkopf’) under SS-Brigadeführer Helmut Becker, had begun the battle by fighting side-by-side in the southern wall of the city. When that collapsed they succeeded in escaping the Soviet trap only by crossing the city to the left bank of the Danube. The two vital bridges remained intact. ‘Totenkopf’ crossed over the Reichsbrücke, and ‘Das Reich’ over the Floridsdorferbrücke, launching desperate counter-attacks in Floridsdorf and to the north. The High Command in Berlin (OKW) had ordered that the cities be defended at whatever cost. Only the SS therefore could order the evacuation of Vienna, and it was Lehmann, moving upward through the channels of Bittrich and then Dietrich, who telephoned Berlin to report that withdrawal from the capital was now an absolute imperative. The fighting in Vienna itself was insignificant, but the fighting in the outskirts to the south and east was devastating to the Wehrmacht and to the SS. The Reichsbrücke fell to the Russians on 13 April. All that saved the IInd SS-Panzerkorps from annihilation at that moment was the failure of the Red Army to cross the

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bridges and pursue the fleeing remnants. All that remained for the remnants to fight for afterwards was the symbolism of Oberdonau: this heart of Ostmark, this birthplace of Hitler (Braunau), this city of his youth (Linz), this capital of Upper Austria intended in his mind to be the future capital of the world. Linz counted more than Vienna in the Führer’s eyes, and the tattered remnants of his SS divisions now pulled back with the rest of the battle-weary Wehrmacht to defend whatever was left. Among these SS units, ‘Das Reich’ withdrew westward, but even its remnants were now split in two, with some elements retreating northward in the direction of Dresden, their fate unknown. The rump of the division recrossed the Danube and moved up the right bank to the Enns river, in the vicinity of Mauthausen, while ‘Totenkopf’ moved up along the left bank. The destruction of the bridges along the Danube prevented any further combined action. Three other SS-Panzer divisions, or what remained of them, were also in the westward retreat: the 1st (‘Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler’) under SS-Brigadeführer Otto Kumm,12 the 9th (‘Hohenstaufen’) under SS-Brigadeführer Sylvester Stadler,13 and the 12th (‘Hitlerjugend’) under SSOberführer Hugo Kraas. By mid-April, the 12th was fighting in the region of Kaumberg and Kleinzell-Hainfeld, while the 1st was reduced to a Kampfgruppe, in the region of Hohenberg. These two divisions at least still functioned as the 1st SSPanzerkorps, under SS-Brigadeführer Hermann Priess, whose headquarters group included the remaining brigade of the 37th SS-Freiwillige-Kavallerie-Division (‘Lützow’) commanded by SS-Standartenführer Gesele. That is more than can be said for the IInd SS-Panzerkorps along the Danube, now restyled Korps von Bünau, after its commander. Around and about these units, on all roads from the east, droves of scattered troops were making their way westwards, while SS generals strove to reorganize them and hurl them back into the inferno. In choosing Rendulic to replace Wörner as commander-in-chief of Heeresgruppe Süd, Hitler had picked a general whom he trusted would put an end to the fractious relationship that existed under Wörner between the Wehrmacht and the political administration (the Gauleiters), who had exasperated Wörner by their meddling in military affairs. Ren-dulic thus had not only the military responsibility for the defence of Austria but also the diplomatic responsibility for improving the relationship with the Gauleiters and for restoring the morale of the Hungarian units in particular. The Hungarian 3rd Army had remained loyal in the retreat from Budapest, but at the end of March, even before the battle for Vienna, Hungarian units had been disarmed. After the fall of Vienna, the abuse of the Hungarians by certain Germans had intensified, and serious incidents occurred in Krems, Spielberg near Melk, and Steyr. As a result, a Hungarian general in Steyr committed suicide. Rendulic responded with a circular letter addressed to the Gauleiters of Niederdonau (Dr Hugo Jury), of Oberdonau (August Eigruber), and of Steiermark (Dr Siegfried Uiberreither), as well as to the Hungarian high command now at Gmundsen, in which he expressed his indignation: ‘The Hungarian general had fought loyally on our side for 22 months, and had a positive German inclination. This anti-Hungarianism has led us to the point that we have fallen out even with

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well-meaning Hungarians and have turned them into bitter opponents.’ Rendulic added that a considerable number of Hungarians units were still fighting in his Heeresgruppe, and flawlessly at that, and concluded with an order that the disarmed Hungarians be immediately reorganized, rearmed, and treated correctly as allies in the cause.14 Two SS Grenadier divisions made up of Hungarians had in fact been raised: the 25th and the 26th. The 25th, under SS-Brigadeführer Grassy, had sustained heavy losses in Germany, in the defence of Nuremberg, and only a remnant remained, quartered in Gmundsen. The 26th, under SS-Oberführer Maack, had been formed only in March 1945 and, although officially quartered in Vöcklabruch, appears to have been a phantom division. In the general disintegration, combat groups (Kampfgruppen) now took the place of regular Wehrmacht or SS units. Kaltenbrunner formed a battalion (SS-SipoGrenadier 2nd Battalion) out of SS personnel quite unaccustomed to combat, and gave its command to the Hungarian fascist hero, SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny,15 who distributed his three companies north and south of the Danube.16 Another such group was formed by SS-Obersturmbannführer Karl-Heinz Keitel, the brother of Hitler’s chief of staff. K.-H.Keitel had commanded the 1st Regiment (the only brigade left) of the 37th SS Division (‘Lützow’) and had fought the Red Army in the area of Wiener Neustadt. Reduced to a Kampfgruppe, his unit had retreated south-west to Gloggnitz and Neunkirchen, and finally, with other remnants of the 6th Army, he crossed the Enns.17 By the end of April 1945, therefore, the Wehrmacht and SS were reeling under the enormous weight of the Soviet onslaught, which included no fewer than nine armies in its invasion of eastern Austria. Heeresgruppe Süd had become Heeresgruppe Ostmark. Its 8th Army, still under General Kreysing, headquartered in Gaubitsch north of Vienna, held a sector running from the Ernstbrunnwald to Trebic-Tabor in Czechoslovakia. The remnants of the 6th Panzer Army were in flight along the Danube. Further south, the 6th Army had abandoned Graz, the capital of Styria. On the Yugoslav frontier, 2nd Panzer Army was now a part of Heeresgruppe E under Generaloberst Alexander Löhr.18 Its 7th SS mountain division, made up of ethnic Germans from the Balkans, was in retreat towards the Austrian frontier, trailing an exceptional record of atrocities. The 16th SS PanzerGrenadier-Division was guarding the frontier at Dravograd against the approaching Yugoslav partisans. To the west, the 13th SS mountain division had originally included many Bosnian Muslims who had engaged in many atrocities against the Serbs in Tito’s forces; widespread desertion in the face of the Red Army had resulted in the division’s reorganization in October 1944 into an ethnic German unit which now took up its position on the Italian frontier, to the west of Tarvisio, where it faced the advance of the British Eighth Army under Lieutenant-General McCreery. Even more exposed to the British advance was SS-Brigadeführer Heinz Harmel, holding Carnia with a Kampfgruppe in the face of the advancing British 6th Armoured Division, and with his own record of atrocities to spur him on. The

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overwhelming threat to what was left of resistance in Austria was nevertheless coming from the northwest, and it was rolling down like thunder.

2 The American assault from the west

Mauthausen had the particularity, among all the camps in the SS archipelago, of being situated at the point farthest from the invading armies, whether from the east, the west, or the south. The Hauptlager, and the majority of its Nebenlager, were situated in Upper Austria (Oberdonau), and the race to reach them first, though not a conscious one, was a race between the Soviets and the Americans. There was, in any event, an International Restraining Line, agreed upon on 30 April 1945 (in a slightly revised form), by General of the Army Dwight D.Eisenhower, Supreme Commander SHAEF, and Marshal A.J.Antonov, the Soviet Chief of Staff. This demarcation line for the Western and Eastern Allied forces meeting in Austria was the Enns river, and north of that river it followed the railway line running northsouth from Freistadt to St Valentin, some 20 kilometres to the east of Linz. In the east, now that the 2nd Ukrainian Front had swung north towards Czechoslovakia, it was Tolbukhin’s 3rd Ukrainian Front that was advancing westward from Vienna; it was led by Glagolev’s 9th Guards Army on the north bank of the Danube, and by Zachvateyev’s 4th Guards Army on the south bank. In the west, Eisenhower was advancing towards Austria with two army groups: Bradley’s US 12th and Devers’ US 6th. Bradley’s army group included Patton’s Third Army, while Devers’ army group included Patch’s Seventh Army. The tactical demarcation line between Bradley and Devers (and between Patton and Patch, who were operating on the flanks of their respective Groups) ran through Braunau to Bad Ischl. This meant that Patch would have the honour of taking Munich and Berchtesgaden,1 and once in Austria, of liberating a few scattered Nebenlager to the south-west of the mother camp. The great majority, however, would fall within the path of Patton. Equally in Patton’s path in April 1945 before he reached Austria were the first SS concentration camps in Germany to be liberated by the Western Allies, namely Ohrdruf near Gotha and its mother-camp, Buchenwald. On 5 April, as Ohrdruf was falling, Buchenwald’s commandant Hermann Pister ordered the evacuation of the 47 000 prisoners remaining in the Hauptlager. This was not completed, and those still in the camp in the afternoon of 11 April rose in revolt, seizing 76 of the SS guards before the arrival of Patton’s troops that evening. When, at 6 p.m., the chief of police in Weimar, SS-Standartenführer Schmidt, telephoned Pister with orders that he liquidate all prisoners still in the camp, an inmate answered the phone.2 The

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courage of Buchenwald’s prisoner-militia on 11 April would eventually lead to the myth that Buchenwald liberated itself. While nothing excuses the campaign waged later by Soviet, East German and other communist sources to belittle the role of the Americans, a number of errors were made after the liberation of Buchenwald which could have been avoided; worse, the lessons they provided were ignored, so that the mistakes would be repeated in every liberated camp. The most glaring error concerned the food provided by the US military to the starving survivors.3 Abundant quantities of food were requisitioned from Weimar and distributed to the ex-prisoners, whereupon they developed gastrointestinal problems, and many died. Major-General Warren F.Draper, chief of the Army’s Public Health Branch, was summoned to the camp and reported after his visit that ‘the intake [was] now controlled’.4 His report was certainly not studied. The breakdown in the water supply was equally unforeseen: the camp went nine days without water before the US engineers could restore the supply.5 The result was that a number of survivors died who might have been saved. While precise figures are not available, the estimate of 21 000 survivors on 11 April, the day of liberation, had shrunk to 20 000 on 16 April. These included 1207 listed as ‘Spanish Republicans and miscellaneous’.6 What also offends the moral sense is the reaction of certain US officers and journalists who visited the camp. The first group of US officers to visit Buchenwald’s sick bay said of the survivors: ‘They are…unpleasant to look on. It is easy to adopt the Nazi theory that they are subhuman.’7 A US intelligence report commented on the plight of the Jewish children who survived: ‘During their years in concentration camp, they have received no schooling, have read no children’s books, have seen no movies, have enjoyed none of the normal sport of children.’8 It is hard to say who is the more naïve: the US intelligence officer who wrote this report, or the editor who produced what is taken to be the official report on Buchenwald. A Jewish child-victim of the Nazis would be quite willing to go through life without a book or a movie in exchange for an exemption from having his legs broken by the SA against a tree, or his head smashed by the SS against a wall, or his body flung through the closing door of the gas-chamber on to the heads of the screaming women. Buchenwald received more publicity than any other camp, with the possible exception of Bergen-Belsen,9 for reasons that were accidental. It was the first large SS camp to be reached by the Western Allies, and its subsidiary Ohrdruf was the only camp to be visited by Eisenhower. Precisely because it was the first to be opened, he went to see it, in the company of Bradley and Patton, on 13 April, less than 48 hours after its liberation. Eisenhower was visibly nauseated, but he made the comment: ‘I really don’t think that the bulk of the Germans knew what was going on.’ When told by Patton that the Bürgermeister of Gotha and his wife had committed suicide after they were shown the camp, Eisenhower added: ‘Maybe there is hope after all.’10 As for the American journalists who visited Ohrdruf and Buchenwald, probably none arrived until five days after their liberation, and they found little to

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corroborate the reports issued earlier by the US military. Instead of praising the military for their success in cleaning up the camps, the journalists cast doubt on the earlier reports.11 The truth about Buchenwald was nevertheless demonstrable. The American William I.Nichols was invited by the US commandant at Buchenwald to visit him in his office, formerly occupied by Pister. Opening a drawer on the right of his desk, the American officer pulled out, to Nichols’ open-mouthed astonishment, a handful of tattooed human skins of the kind that were used in the making of lampshades.12 The scepticism of the American journalists, and their suggestion that the facts had been seriously exaggerated, rightly irritated Bradley. On 9 May he reported to Eisenhower that Buchenwald had been cleaned up, and he suggested that no further visits to Buchenwald be permitted. Accordingly, on 14 May his 12th Army Group worked actively to prevent any further visits, especially by distinguished persons.13 The work of saving lives and evacuating survivors continued, and when the US forces on 4 July 1945 turned the area over to the Soviets, in whose Zone it lay, Buchenwald was nearly empty.14 Of the prisoners evacuated from Buchenwald just before the arrival of the Americans, some 6000 male prisoners were forced to march south-east to KLFlossenbürg, near Weiden north-east of Nuremberg, arriving there on 13 April. A survivor reported that on 15 April, at 6 p.m., a number of American and British officers, including at least one general, were executed there on the orders of Himmler. On 19 April a new and general exodus began of the prisoners of both camps, totalling some 16 000, who left in five different convoys at the rate of one a day. The first convoy consisted of Jewish prisoners, the second comprised the Buchenwald prisoners, and the other three the prisoners of Flossenbürg; among the latter were twenty British and Australian prisoners of war. Each convoy was under the command of an SS officer of the rank of Obersturmführer or Untersturmführer. The prisoners were divided into groups of 1000, with each group under an SSOberscharführer assisted by a Zugführer and two Henkersknechte, whose job it was to kill the stragglers and those attempting to escape. An escort party (Begleitmannschaft) of 40–50 SS was assigned to each group, marching to their right and left, and each group was sub-divided into sections of 100 prisoners, each under an Unterscharführer and three or four SS. The total number of SS assigned to the exodus was 1300, comprising some 700 old, long-serving Allgemeine SS with the rest made up of recently inducted Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine personnel. Survivors reported to the Americans that the SS played harmonicas as the prisoners too exhausted to continue were shot through the head. The direction the convoys took ran through the two long forests of Oberpfählzer Wald and Bayerischer Wald, their destination Mauthausen. After four days and three nights on the march the SS and the survivors reached Stamsried near Regen, and it was there in the nearby forest that the first convoy was intercepted by Patton’s troops on 23 April.15 Patton’s Third Army now consisted of three army corps: the XIIth, under S.LeRoy Irwin, which Patton deployed on his left flank (to the east); the XXth, under Walton H.Walker, in the centre; and the newly added IIIrd Corps, under

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James A.Van Fleet, on his right and in reserve. The line of advance for Irwin ran along the left bank of the Danube through Linz, and that for Walker along the right bank, through Linz but also to the south through Vöcklabruck. Irwin’s corps included three infantry divisions (the 26th, the 58th, and the 90th) and above all the 11th Armored Division (‘Thunderbolt’) under Holmes E.Dager, whose initials earned him the nickname ‘High Explosive’. Since Patton’s theatre of operations did not yet include Czechoslovakia, Dager’s line of advance was relatively narrow, extending only from the Danube to the Bohemian forest. It was on the edge of that forest that Dager’s men intercepted the convoy from Flossenbürg. If at Buchenwald, as the survivor Eugen Kogon reports, there were very few cases of savagery inflicted by the ex-prisoners on the SS who fell into their hands,16 it was another story here. The official US report shows that many of the SS guards were killed by Dager’s troops, and some by the ex-prisoners, but many also escaped, and only 19 SS were listed in American hands.17 Similar treatment was meted out to the guards at Bergen-Belsen, in Saxony far to the north, liberated on 15 April by a column of the British 11th Armoured Division. Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Daniel, in command of the column, crashed his tanks through the gate at the moment that the guards were shooting the prisoners running to the fence. ‘There were Hitlerjugend shooting prisoners so they would die in agony,’ recalled Daniel. ‘I was so disgusted I shot the guards with the last rounds I had. They were the scum of the earth.’18 Daniel’s tanks did not remain in the camp but left in pursuit of the retreating Wehrmacht. It was to win Daniel’s men a rebuke similar to that thrown later at Dager’s men in Mauthausen. At Bergen-Belsen it would be another two days before the camp was truly liberated, and in the meantime the prisoners were at the mercy of 1500 Hungarians guards. It was the liberation of KL-Dachau, on 29 April, that persuaded even the most sceptical Allied journalist that nothing in the official reports had been exaggerated.19 Unlike other SS camps, including Mauthausen, Dachau was overrun while some 500 of the SS guards were still inside. In this case it was an American lieutenant who was so sickened by what he saw—the rotting corpses, the starving inmates—that he ordered his men to machine-gun the captive guards, killing no fewer than 346. All the rest were killed within an hour by the inmates. One of the participants in the action, Pfc Solomon Lasky, of Brick, New Jersey, had just committed the same error of feeding his rations to the survivors. This gesture of goodwill, everywhere repeated, had the same grievous consequences. The com plaint of so many survivors that the Allies had made no real preparations to take care of them was later magnified to the maximum by the communists, and 50 years later a survivor of Dachau, the Spanish communist Francisco García Mochales, remains unforgiving: ‘The American soldiers gave us nothing, or nothing we could eat.’20 Lasky remembers the moment too, when he saw the survivors die in front of him from overeating. Sick at heart, beside himself with rage, the American GI now delighted in the action. ‘We went wild,’ he later admitted. ‘We caught the SS troops there, lined them up and just took care of them. I didn’t ask any questions and didn’t care about the answers.’21 Meanwhile, the myth was born at Dachau, as earlier at Buchenwald and

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later at Mauthausen, that the camp liberated itself. Sir Robert Sheppard, who was a prisoner of Dachau at that moment, testifies to its inaccuracy.22 The US 11th Armored Division’s drive south-east from Fulda had already exposed it to the Germans’ last-ditch methods of warfare as well as the atrocities of the SS. In its attack on Bayreuth on 14–18 April, Dager’s division had found itself fighting groups of teenagers, some of them only 13-years-old, and all of them no doubt inspired by what Bayreuth meant to the Führer.23 On 19 April, ‘Thunderbolt’ took Grafenwöhr, the training ground of the SS, and on 23 April it took Cham without resistance, finding among its booty the private train of Feldmarschall Albert Kesselring, now the supreme commander of the Southern front (OB Süd). ‘Thunderbolt’ then got its first sight of SS atrocities when one of its three brigades, Combat Command B under Colonel Wesley W.Yale, reached Bamberg and liberated 3000 Russian and Polish slave labourers. With his counterpart, Brigadier-General Willard A.Holbrook Jr, commanding Combat Command A, Yale reached the Regen river on 24 April, meeting on the way a convoy of starving slave workers evacuated from the Flossenbürg and Buchenwald camps; overrunning the SS guards, the Americans liberated 16 000 prisoners, but they also found, on the road along which the prisoners had marched, the bodies of hundreds more, shot whenever they could no longer keep up. At Stamsried, Yale’s brigade found several hundred British prisoners of war who had been in German hands since the Battle of Dunkirk, and then, at Posing, another slave camp, whose dazed survivors, starving and in tatters, fanned out over the countryside in search of food. Meanwhile Holbrook’s brigade reached Grafenau, overtaking the Japanese legation of 37 men, women and children who were fleeing from Berlin to Vienna by train. Freyung fell to Yale on the morning of 26 April, and ‘Thunderbolt’ was poised to become the first Allied unit after the Soviets to enter Austria. Now came a change. For those who thought the war was over, there was a rude awakening. Dager found himself, at Coburg, and again at Landau near Passau, in the heaviest fighting he had seen for many weeks, evidence of the considerable force the Wehrmacht had built up during the past several days of inactivity. Neither the weather nor the terrain favoured the tanks. Torrential rain turned the ground into a soggy mess in which tank-drivers churned their tracks in vain. The terrain was equally unobliging, since the narrow roads flanked by wooded hills afforded little opportunity for tank deployment. On 26 April, Holbrook’s Combat Command A reached the frontier town of Wegscheid, but it would take the brigade four days to win it. Colonel Hearn’s motorized cavalry suffered significant losses, forcing his superior (Holbrook) to order up the division’s artillery and reduce Wegscheid to flaming ruins. On 30 April, Wegscheid was in American hands, and it brought Dager 2000 prisoners, including 1500 Hungarians; these surrendered en masse, saying that the Germans had betrayed them by confiscating all their weapons, evidence that Rendulic’s order to all German commanders to treat the Hungarians with respect had not been heeded. At the end of April, the race was close. Patton’s forces were some 20 kilometres to the west of Mauthausen, while the Red Army was some 100 kilometres to the east.

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As Patton’s spearhead was poised to strike at Linz, the Soviet spearheads were advancing along the north bank of the Danube between Stockerau and Krems, and on the south bank had captured St Polten and were moving towards the Traisen river. The result was the constriction of the remaining Wehrmacht and SS forces into a smaller area, but the remnants were constantly disintegrating. Germany’s 6th Panzer Army could consider itself lucky to have emerged from the Battle of Vienna as well as it did, but its two SS-Panzer corps were far apart: the 1st had retreated westward to Pernitz, and the IInd northward to Klosterneuburg, and they would never again fight in a joint action. At the division level, the 3rd SS-Panzer Division (‘Totenkopf’), or what remained of it, was fighting in vain to stop the Soviet advance along the north bank of the Danube. As for the 2nd (‘Das Reich’), in no sense was it still a divi4sion: in the course of the Battle of Vienna it had been torn apart. In these circumstances, it is surprising to read, in the battle reports of the US 11th Armored Division, and even in its ‘After Action’ report compiled on 15 June 1945,24 the exaggerated estimates of the strength of the Wehrmacht and SS in the area of Linz. To the south of the city, the force is described as the 6th SS-Panzer Army; no unit by that name existed, not even at the beginning of the Battle of Austria. Dager’s G-2 (Intelligence) had reported on 26 April that ‘Das Reich’ was in the vicinity and preparing strong defences in the area of Passau north of the Danube, and in the ‘After Action’ report it is placed in that location, in division strength. The fact of the matter is that the SS divisions had by now been so badly mauled by the Red Army that every one of them except ‘Totenkopf’ was now operating at the level of Kampfgruppen (or brigade-strength, at best). It is a tribute to their combat performance that their enemy paid them the tribute of considering them intact. The trees were already in blossom, but it was a snowstorm that greeted Patton’s forces on 1 May as they poured across the Austrian border. Rohrbach and Neufelden fell that day to Holbrook, who then succeeded in crossing the Mühl river despite its unusually high level and dogged German resistance. Snow and rain continued to fall for the next two days as Holbrook’s brigade headed south-east towards Linz and Yale’s brigade swung north-east towards Zwetd an der Rodl, liberating on the way a camp for British prisoners of war at Waxenberg. In capturing Zwettl on 3 May, CC-B had cut the main north-south road into Linz. Hitler’s suicide on 30 April saved him from ever learning of the fall of his birthplace Braunau or of his home-town Linz. Despite the Führer’s death, the orders from Eigruber in Linz on 2 May were that Braunau was to be defended to the last,25 but the townsfolk thought otherwise, and the town capitulated the same day to the US 13th Armored Division of Walker’s XXth Corps. As for Linz, Patton’s strategy was to capture it in a pincer movement using two of Irwin’s divisions (the 11th Armored and the 26th Infantry) on the left flank and one of Walker’s divisions (the 65th Infantry) on the right. Major-General Stanley E.Reinhart, commanding the 65th, found it impossible to match the speed of Irwin’s divisions, and was later rebuked by Walker for failing to share the honours that went with the capture of Linz. While this was one more example of personal

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military ambition, the more important factor is that Reinhart’s late arrival would allow the German garrison in Linz to withdraw to the east, crossing the Traun river without difficulty.26 On 4 May, Eigruber set himself up in Kirchdorf an der Krems, 40 kilometres to the south. Eigruber, the Gauleiter who had ordered that Braunau be defended at all costs, now became the only Gauleiter in Austria to seek a surrender. In the afternoon of 4 May, while Holbrook’s brigade was bearing down on Urfahr, Linz’s twin city on the north side of the Danube, an emissary from Linz arrived at Gramastetten, Holbrook’s headquarters 10 kilometres to the north-west. Claiming full authority, the envoy expressed the readiness of the German command to surrender both cities, on the sole condition that the German forces in the area be permitted to move east to fight the Soviets.27 In accordance with orders from the very highest Allied level, Holbrook adamantly refused, and the emissary was given a two-hour ultimatum to surrender the two cities and all their garrison, unconditionally. The German command neither accepted the terms nor retained any hope of holding the Urfahr-Linz area, and consequendy evacuated to the east whatever elements it could motorize, on the night of 4–5 May, blowing up whatever guns it could not move. Although the heavy guns in and around Linz were blown up, that was about as much as was demolished. The bridges and the power plants remained intact. The German refusal to surrender the twin cities resulted in two days of hard fighting, but Holbrook’s troops entered Urfahr on 5 May at 11 a.m., crossed the two bridges into Linz, and occupied that city in an hour. During the actual entry, not a shot was fired. As the American tankmen rolled in, they expected the usual sullen silence they had received from German civilians through every town and village they had passed. Instead, the population smiled and waved. The women and children showered the US tanks, half-tracks and trucks with lilacs and tulips. Housewives offered them pitchers of cider and bottles of wine, and since they knew nothing of Eisenhower’s non-fraternization order, they were bewildered when their friendliness was spurned. The liberation of thousands of tattered and starving slave labourers, employed up to this moment in the three Nebenlager in the city,28 made it more clear, to victors and vanquished alike, that Austrians were not going to emerge from their Nazi past as easily as they hoped. The crowd that roared its welcome to the Americans included those who earlier had vented their hatred on the slaves. Meanwhile, nearly 5000 Wehrmacht troops were taken prisoner in and around Linz, but it was understood that as many or more had slipped away to the east.29 General Dager, commanding the US 11th Armored Division, had made his first radio contact with the Red Army on 29 April, and was now in constant communication, using two Russian-speaking Americans.30 Dager’s orders from Irwin on 3 May were to continue the advance eastward as far as the International Restraining Line. Consequently, Yale captured Gallneukirchen on 4 May and Katsdorf, where the railway was still in operation, early the following morning. On 5 May, Yale’s brigade (CC-B) reached Pierbach, becoming the unit furthest east of all Western Allied units in the whole of Europe, apart from Greece. While Yale set up his headquarters in Gallneukirchen, he followed orders to approach the Line

THE AMERICAN ASSAULT FROM THE WEST 217

with the minimum force required, and thereafter to send reconnaissance patrols eastward to a depth of about 20 kilometres in order to make contact with the vanguard of the 3rd Ukrainian Front. The patrols were to include Russian-speaking liaison officers. Approaching the Line with the minimum force necessary was a matter of concern for both Dager and Irwin. For many days they had been disturbed by the fact that ‘Thunderbolt’ was gravely exposed on its lengthening northern flank, across the Czechoslovakian border which was outside its bounds. The enemy forces to the north were of unpredictable fighting ability: they included the Army for the Liberation of the Russian People, and the remnants of the German 8th Army. The latter included, ironically, the homonym of ‘Thunderbolt’, the 11th Panzer Division, a superbly proud unit which, under Generalleutnant Wend von Wietersheim, had single-handedly, seven months earlier in the Battle of France, saved an entire German army group from annihilation.31 While Dager’s 11th Armored was thus proceeding eastwards along the north bank of the Danube, the 26th Infantry Division under Paul was advancing along the south bank, finding no resistance when, on the evening of 5 May, it reached the Enns river and took the town of Enns that night. It too had reached the Restraining Line. On the same day, the 71st Infantry Division under Wyman, almost unopposed, crossed the Traun river near Wels and occupied Steyr, while the 80th Infantry Division under McBride reached Vöcklabruck.32 That day, 5 May, was to become a date never to be forgotten by those at Mauthausen who lived it.

3 The liberation of Gusen and Mauthausen

Saturday, 5 May. The morning dawned majestic on the grey-silver Danube and its valley clothed in a misty veil. The spring sunshine, the mountain greenery, the dark pines, the snowy crests, all would seem in retrospect like the birth of a new life. This day of liberation, that belonged above all else to the starving survivors who wrung their gnarled hands in gratitude for their deliverance, belonged also to the 64 Americans of Patton’s Third Army who reached the gates on the morning that none who was present would forget. The US 11th Armored Division (‘Thunderbolt’) under General Dager had set up its headquarters at Schwanenstadt, south-west of Wels. The division’s strength on 1 May was 613 officers and 10 162 men; the casualties among its officers had reduced the staff to 50 below its normal strength, with the result that many officers and NCOs were given command positions superior to their ranks. Of Dager’s three brigades (called Combat Commands), CC-A under General Holbrook was now headquartered in Linz, and CC-B under Colonel Yale in Gallneukirchen. On the morning of 5 May, each of these two brigade commanders, through their respective chains of command, sent out a reconnaissance patrol in the direction of Mauthausen. The man whom history would record as the liberator of Mauthausen was not an officer but a staff sergeant from Chicago, Albert J. Kosiek, who found himself, for lack of a lieutenant,1 leader of 1st Platoon, D Troop, 41st Cavalry Squadron, Mechanized, of Yale’s Combat Command B.2 The battalion, commanded by Major Michael Greene, was quartered in Katsdorf, 19 kilometres north of Mauthausen. D Troop, commanded by Captain Odis Whitnell, in issuing its orders for 5 May, instructed Kosiek’s platoon ‘to investigate a German strongpoint near Mauthausen’, and to check the condition of the bridge at St Georgen over the Gusen river which Yale intended to use even for his heavy tanks. Kosiek set off at daybreak with his 22 men, travelling in three armoured scout-cars (each with four men) and four peeps.3 Following the Gusen valley road southward, Kosiek’s patrol reached Lungitz, the site of Gusen III, the smallest and most northerly of the three Gusen camps. The guards, who were dressed in SS uniforms but who were in fact mainly members of the Vienna fire brigade, were so willing to surrender that Kosiek detailed only two of his men to escort the captives to brigade headquarters at Gallneukirchen. Kosiek then proceeded down the valley which narrows as it nears St Georgen, the site of

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Gusen II. It was there, just north of the river, that Kosiek’s leading car, commanded by Sergeant Harry Saunders, intercepted a motorcycle and a white Opel flying a Red Cross flag and with a red cross painted on the bonnet. Riding in the Opel was Louis Haefliger, the delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the SS officer Reimer. Haefliger, rather surprisingly, did not speak English, and neither Kosiek nor Saunders spoke German, with the result that the meeting was tense,4 but the platoon included a German-speaking gunner, Albert Rosenthal also from Chicago, who understood at least something of Haefliger’s purpose. What Kosiek understood from the interpreter was that there was a large concentration camp nearby by the name of Mauthausen, that ‘the Red Cross man was trying to contact an American general to surrender it’, and that ‘400 SS were ready to give up’.5 Unrecorded by Kosiek is the action taken by Haefliger. It was Haefliger, fully informed of the plan to annihilate the population of Gusen II by blowing up the Bergkristall tunnels, who persuaded Kosiek to first obtain the surrender of the local garrison force. The SS had prepared barricades in the streets of the town, but the populace had removed them in the night, and Haefliger guided the patrol straight to the church behind which stood the entrance to the tunnels. The commandant, dressed in SS uniform, surrendered, but again the Americans had found only a stand-in commandant; SS-Obersturmführer Max Pausch, the Lagerleiter of Gusen II, had fled.6 The prisoners of Gusen, and the Austrian populace marked for death, thus escaped the fate that Ziereis had decreed for them. The CICR holds to the view that its delegates succeeded in persuading Ziereis to retract the order he sent to Seidler.7 Seidler, who did not live to provide his version of the events, may still have intended to carry out this massacre, with or without the approval of Ziereis, when he invited the prison population to take refuge in the tunnels of Kellerbau and Bergkristall. What is certain is that the prisoners did not comply. It was one thing for Kosiek to accept the Germans’ surrender; it was another thing to take so large a number prisoner, and Kosiek had a quite different mission to perform, which was first to test the bridge over the Gusen river in that town. Finding it intact, he radioed the news to D Troop’s executive officer, Lieutenant Larkins, in Katsdorf, mentioning at the same time his experience that morning and the information he had received about the existence nearby of a large concentration camp. Larkins had some misgivings about the risk that Kosiek’s tiny force was running. Reconnaissance patrols were allowed a certain flexibility, to the extent of exceeding their limit by 10 or 12 kilometres, but it was not in Kosiek’s orders to go looking for any concentration camp, and the dis tance involved might take him out of radio contact with his base, which would indeed be the case. Nevertheless, Larkins allowed Kosiek to proceed, and the patrol left St Georgen and arrived at Wimming, the site of Gusen I, which Kosiek at first took to be Mauthausen. Again he found the same readiness on the part of the guards to surrender, and again he faced the same predicament. Nor could he do in Gusen what later that day he could do in Mauthausen: pass authority to a government of liberated prisoners, because in the Gusen camps the able-bodied prisoners had already broken out. As Kosiek recounts

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it, he rounded up 40 of the guards and detailed the personnel of two of his peeps to march them back to the command post in Katsdorf. The rest of the guards, told by Kosiek that they would have to wait before being taken prisoner, feared for their lives and begged Kosiek to allow them to keep their weapons in order to maintain control in the camp until the Americans returned. Kosiek agreed. While the credit goes to Kosiek’s men as the first to reach Gusen (and Mauthausen), his was not the only unit to reach both sites that morning. Kosiek was in the Gusen area for only 30 minutes, including 15 minutes in St Georgen, but precisely in that period another US patrol arrived in St Georgen from the west. This unit, made up of 41 men travelling in three half-tracks but with no radio, was the 3rd Platoon, A Company, 55th Armored Infantry Battalion of General Holbrook’s CC-A, stationed at Ried im Innkreis. The 3rd Platoon had no officer, since its commander, Second Lieutenant Kieling, had had to replace Captain Hughston, the company commander, wounded on 1 May. Staff Sergeant Leander Hens was in command, with Staff Sergeant Edward Bergh his second, but Hens took the lead since he spoke fluent German. His mission, like Kosiek’s, was not to go looking for a concentration camp but to reconnoitre towards the Soviet lines. Arriving in St Georgen soon after 8.30 that morning, they found that some prisoners had already broken out of Gusen II. From the villagers, Hens learned about the threat of annihilation. Their fear of being left alone was so great that Hens detailed Sergeant Robert Sellers and his machine-gun section to remain in St Georgen and prevent the SS from carrying out the plan. An hour after their arrival in St Georgen, Hens led his patrol on towards the Hauptlager, passing the camps of Gusen II and Gusen I without dismounting, but stopping briefly for Hens to speak with some of the inmates before continuing on to make his own encounter with the horror on the hill.8 Meanwhile Kosiek, who until that day had never heard the name of Mauthausen, now led his convoy up the hill towards the Hauptlager. Kosiek placed Haefliger’s car at the head of it, and as they climbed they passed (as Kosiek recalled) large field cannons mounted on the hillside.9 Arriving at the SS garage entrance, with its German eagle perched over the gate, he stopped on the road above the Sanitätslager, which as we have seen lay outside the fortress in the field below. It was now 9.30 a.m. Kosiek had not had time to inspect any of the three Nebenlager in Gusen. Now the reality appeared in all its horror. The Americans could not believe their eyes. As if some mass grave reopened, those who could walk stumbled towards them, living skeletons, naked, half naked, or in filthy rags. They clapped their hands without speaking. Their hands were so emaciated, thought one of the Americans, that it sounded like the clapping of seals.10 While Saunders’ armoured car and one peep stayed by the garage gate, Kosiek’s peep and the other armoured car rounded the bend at the top of the hill and approached the main gate, which opened as they arrived. To control a difficult situation, Kosiek ordered his gunner, John Slatton, to fire a few rounds over their heads; Slatton remembers firing his machine-gun into the wall and into the ground, whereupon the prisoners turned back into the fortress. As Kosiek and some of his men dismounted and walked through the gate,

THE LIBERATION OFGUSEN AND MAUTHAUSEN 221

they were stunned by the sight of thousands of delirious prisoners who hugged one another, wept and sang, the Spaniards that most joyous of anthems, the ‘Himno de Riego’, and everyone the single word, whether Freiheit! Svoboda! Wolnosc! Szabadsag! or Libertad! Some danced or hopped around, some screamed hysterically, some broke down in tears. And some were already in riot. It was a scene to test any soldier’s nerves. Kosiek was met by Kern, who was accompanied by a tall young German who served as his interpreter. Kern and the Vienna firemen were willing to surrender, but not to surrender their arms if they were to be left alone in the Lager. The able-bodied prisoners for their part were eager to seize them. Kern also asked that he might surrender the fortress to an officer. Kosiek replied that as a platoon leader he held that authority. Kern then agreed to surrender if Kosiek could put an end to the riot in the kitchen, and led him to it. They found the door barred, but Kosiek broke through the window, and then discovered that most of the rioters were Polish. Though he addressed them in his native Polish, it was to no avail. The credit for restoring order at this point went to the international committee, whose just elected president, Dr Heinrich Dürmayer, who spoke English, met Kosiek on the commandant’s balustrade where Ziereis and Bachmayer had strutted so short a time before. Kosiek urged him to persuade the leaders of the national groups to return to their quarters while the Americans disarmed the Austrian guards. Kosiek then ordered all the guards to assemble at the main gate and lay their weapons in three trucks that Kosiek had requisitioned from the SS garage. He was just in radio range of Larkins in Katsdorf, and Larkins instructed him to march the guards to the brigade headquarters in Gallneukirchen, a distance of over 25 kilometres. Kosiek’s platoon nevertheless remained at Mauthausen on 5 May from 9.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. In the meantime, Hens’ patrol had also passed through the Hauptlager. Arriving at the SS garage gate they had seen the vehicles of the 41st Cavalry, together with the Red Cross car parked outside. The first thing that Bergh remembers seeing were ‘three living skeletons dropping dead from sheer exhaustion in their attempt to pass through the open gates’. Like Kosiek’s patrol, Hens examined every aspect of the camp: the gas chamber, the crematorium, the barracks, the quarry, all the time having to step over piles of dead. At 12.30 p.m., Hens reassembled his patrol at the garage gate. They had exceeded the territorial limit of their mission, and having no radio they were forced to withdraw. They then returned to St Georgen to pick up Sellers’ machine-gun section, but before leaving for Linz they spent an hour in the area, during which Hens conversed with the villagers of St Georgen and then with the guards and inmates of Gusen II and I. While Saunders’ unit in the Hauptlager was stationed inside and outside the SS garage, they witnessed the dramatic moment when a group composed largely of Catalans lassoed the bronze eagle over the Swastika above the garage gate and pulled it to the ground. The photographs taken at that moment by Saunders and Francesc Boix are the only two known to have been taken on 5 May. Decades later, at a reunion in Birmingham, Alabama, Simon Wiesenthal recounted his experience at that moment. He was in the Revier when he heard that the Americans were

222 LIBERATION

arriving. He said he knew he was dying but he wanted to touch the white star of a US tank, and started towards an armoured car but passed out before he reached it.11 Other prisoners, Saunders recalls, ‘streamed out of the gates and scattered like dust across the countryside’. A very different picture is presented by Kosiek, who attests to the general decorum in which the prisoners behaved, once some basic order had been restored, for which the credit goes indisputably to the ex-prisoners’ international committee. Kosiek later remarked upon the flags of 31 nations which he saw painted on the balustrade of the main gate, and the series of greetings which the American patrol received on the Appellplatz, given in each language by the various representatives on the international committee (the first greetings being in Polish). Finally, and most memorably for the Americans, was the ex-prisoners’ band that played ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ while Kosiek’s platoon stood at attention presenting arms. The band had learnt the anthem only the night before, the instructor being one of the three surviving American male prisoners,12 Lieutenant Jack H.Taylor, US Navy Reserve. A native of Hollywood, California, Taylor had served in the Office of Strategic Services and had been assigned to the Dupont Mission. Arrested by the Gestapo in Vienna on 1 December 1944, he had survived torture and four months of prison before being sent to Mauthausen. On his arrival there, he had passed through the Politische Abteilung and the hands of Hans Prellberg, thence to the hands of Hans Bruckner where, outside the shower-room, there were witnesses to the fury that Bruckner vented on this ‘amerikanische Schweinhund’.13 Taylor told Kosiek that at Mauthausen he had been sentenced to death four times and each time he had been saved only with the help of his fellowprisoners.14 To Saunders’ gunner, John L.Slatton, Taylor said that each time he was put in the line of prisoners waiting to enter the gas chamber, a Russian or other prisoner shoved him out of line to take his place; ‘those people died for him’.15 Taylor was in very poor condition, ‘nearly starving and all skin and bones’, so Kosiek had him wrapped in a blanket and laid him inside Saunders’ armoured car. Slatton recounts that Taylor was shaking and trembling: ‘I offered him a C-ration and it scared him to death. He told me that people would kill us for it. But he took it and nibbled a little of it, and put it hurriedly in his pocket.’16 Kosiek no doubt wanted to stay in the Hauptlager longer, to help in any way he could, but he was conscious of the fact that his patrol could do nothing except try to maintain order, and that he had no authority to stay. Besides, the weather had changed (it was now raining) and he had a duty to save Lieutenant Taylor and the two other American ex-prisoners, who were lying in the armoured cars exposed to the rain. He therefore informed the international committee that the US forces were very close, and that a captain and a company would be on their way just as soon as he could reach his base with his news. The convoy thus left the camp at 4.30 p.m.,17 with the three trucks containing the heavier weapons of the Austrian guards being driven by three able-bodied ex-prisoners. The light weapons, or as many as could be found, had been rounded up by Kosiek and Saunders, who selected as personal trophies those they valued the most (distributing them fairly to their men), and with a can of petrol setting the rest ablaze.18 They now faced the task of

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escorting the thousand Austrian guards to their base, while stopping first at Gusen to pick up the 800 guards who had been waiting there, and taking their weapons too. The feat was important enough for Kosiek to take the precaution of sending a courier by peep directly to the brigade headquarters in Gallneukirchen, 26 kilometres from Mauthausen. It was 1.30 a.m. on 6 May when Kosiek’s convoy entered Gallneukirchen, and there the executive officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Richard R.Seibel, showed blank amazement that a platoon of only 23 men was bringing in no fewer than 1800 prisoners.19 What Kosiek did not know was what had been lost by not targeting Gusen’s crematorium: the SS had given priority to burning all documents relating to the Messerschmitt-262 jet-fighter, and when the crematorium was inspected later it was found to be filled with the remnants of burnt paper.20 The daily report from ‘Thunderbolt’ of 5 May 1945, perhaps understandably, made little reference to the discovery of Gusen and Mauthausen. The most important news of the day was that the wide steel and concrete bridge between Urfahr and Linz—described as the only crossing of the Danube between Passau (in US hands) and some undefined point to the west of Vienna (in Soviet hands)—had been seized at noon. While the report omitted the fact that the rail bridge at Mauthausen village was also intact, it pointed out that the seizure of the UrfahrLinz bridge deprived all Wehrmacht forces in Czechoslovakia of the chance to withdraw to the putative Alpenfestung. The other major development reported on 5 May referred to the order of assigning zones to two of the division’s three brigades (CC-A and CC-B) to the east of the Restraining Line while they sent out patrols to make contact with the Red Army. Meanwhile, the camps of Mauthausen and Gusen had been stripped of their guards but abandoned for the night by the Americans. The Americans had promised to return the next morning. The ex-prisoners knew the Americans were close, and closer than the Russians. From the American point of view, there was no logical reason why the surviving prisoners, having reached this moment, would not exercise the necessary self-discipline and stay in their respective camps overnight. From the ex-prisoners’ point of view, the situation was different. There was the matter of wreaking vengeance upon the Kapos, and if at Mauthausen there was an international committee to prevent excesses, there was nothing similar at Gusen. Secondly, there was the frenzied desire to eat. Finally, there was the fear that the SS could indeed return to make a final stand in the fortress.

4 The night of 5–6 May

Today, on the wall outside Mauthausen’s main gate, is a memorial plaque to the US 11th Armored Division that reads: ‘Their deeds will never be forgotten.’ Unfortunately, the division’s prestigious deeds, or at least its last, have not been accurately recorded. Year after year the ‘Thunderbolt’ veterans meet at their reunions, and the division continues to appoint its official historian, but none has gone to work in the US military archives in Maryland to ascertain, point by point, the exact sequence of events in this crowning moment of the division’s long and spectacular drive from the Ardennes to the Danube. It will surely surprise the reader to learn that, 50 years after the liberation of Mauthausen, the veterans of ‘Thunderbolt’ were unable to agree even on the most elementary circumstances of the camp’s liberation. We have seen that two of the division’s patrols (one from the 41st Cavalry and one from the 55th Armored Infantry) which reached the camp and liberated it on 5 May had left the camp by the evening. In 1975, Colonel (retired) Richard R.Seibel, who as a lieutenant-colonel had served as executive officer of Combat Command B under Colonel Yale, submitted a deposition in which he claimed that he personally had arrived at the Hauptlager on 5 May and liberated it before becoming its commandant. When in 1993 the present author sent him a translation of Hans Maršálek’s 1974 account, Seibel responded in rage. Believing that Seibel’s personal records could, as he said, support what he claimed, the present author published in 1995 what he thought was a corrected version1 of the account he had published earlier in 1993.2 On Sunday, 7 May 1995, the day chosen by the Austrian authorities to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Mauthausen, Colonel Seibel, then aged 86, made his second return to Mauthausen—his first was in May 1980—bringing with him several members of his family. They had been fêted the day before in the US Embassy in Vienna by the American Ambassador Swanee Hunt. Kosiek was long since dead, but four American sergeants who had taken part in the liberation, including Saunders and the Hens-Bergh team, were present on the occasion. None of them had met or even heard of Seibel. Before the ceremony, held on the former Appellplatz, opened on that Sunday morning, Seibel and the sergeants met beside the commemorative plaque. It was there that the sergeants informed Seibel that the deposition he had circulated was in error, because he did not reach the camp on 5 May 1945. Seibel agreed with them that he had been

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mistaken. Shortly afterwards, the ceremony began, with hundreds of survivors entering through the main gate and making their way along the parade ground which had once been the site of the hangings and the beatings, past the crematorium and the gas chamber, to the wide platform on which the dignitaries of Austria and many nations were seated. Among them was the Prime Minister of Austria and Ambassador Hunt. Speeches were given by Simon Wiesenthal and others, and then came the turn of Colonel Seibel. Oblivious to what he had admitted to the sergeants only minutes before, Seibel presented himself as the liberator of Mauthausen on 5 May 1945. Three of the sergeants (Hens, Saunders, and Torbuccio) standing to the side in the audience began to shout and gesticulate (‘Come off it, Dick, you weren’t here!’ ‘You’d gone fishin’!’), and then mounted the stage with the intention of taking the microphone. A video-recording of the ceremony shows Seibel responding, ‘I was first into the camp! I don’t know what this fuss is all about!’ At this moment of extreme embarrassment, Ambassador Hunt approached the sergeants with exemplary calm and tact, and asked them not to spoil the occasion with a confrontation. The sergeants agreed, saying ‘We made our point, we’re leaving,’ and a worse scene was thus avoided, but the US Embassy in Vienna drew the necessary lesson from the fracas. A letter went out from Colonel John B.Miller, the US military attaché, addressed to the US Army Center of Military History in Washington DC, urging that the circumstances of the liberation of Mauthausen be clarified once and for all.3 To the outsider, nothing may seem less important to history than to know the day when the first American officer entered Mauthausen and established his authority there, and the US military’s desire to know to which unit the liberation of Mauthausen should be credited misses the point entirely. The essential point, which is now established, is that neither Seibel nor any other American was in Mauthausen from the early evening of 5 May until mid-morning on 6 May. The control of the camp, and the control of the history of that night, thus passed into the hands of the ex-prisoners’ international committee, in which the communists predominated. The result was the development of a legend which was virtually anti-American,4 and which Seibel attributed to Dürmayer and Maršálek.5 This led Seibel to write his deposition of 1975, but the basic inaccuracy in Seibel’s claim served only to increase the heat. Dobiáš pointed out that Seibel’s deposition was not distributed to historians at his own will, but had to be requested, by Maršálek and by the University of Vienna.6 And if Maršálek is, as Wiesenthal describes him,7 ‘a 150% communist who is not liked in Austria’, his revised edition in 1980 made it clear that Mauthausen was indeed liberated by the Americans on 5 May.8 The history of the Liberation thus came to be dominated by those who deliberately downplayed the role of the Americans, and could always use Seibel’s inaccuracies as a way to offset their own. ‘On 5 May 1945,’ wrote S.Smirnov in Études soviétiques, ‘two days before the arrival of the Anglo-American troops [sic], the prisoners rose up and regained their freedom.’9 ‘Once and for all,’ wrote Miguel Malle, ‘the liberation of Mauthausen was the work of the Appareil militaire international [the prisoners’ secret military network].’10 The prisoners, he

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added, disarmed the Austrian police before the Americans arrived.11 ‘On the morning of 5 May,’ wrote Ramón Bargueño, ‘we disarmed the Vienna police and let them leave with just their rucksacks.’12 The prisoners won their freedom with their own weapons,’ wrote Mariano Constante.13 In 1984, a certain Albert Morillon, a French survivor of Mauthausen with the advantage of 39 years to ascertain his facts, wrote that Mauthausen was liberated by the Canadians!14 Despite the total absence of evidence that any SS was ever found, alive or dead, in Mauthausen, there are frequent statements in the communist canon that their prisoners included SS.15 Malle then proceeds to accuse the Americans of dawdling: ‘I know that some of my comrades feel resentment over the way the Americans took their good time and left us in the nightmare anguish of 5–6 May.’16 In April 1997, Constante still would not yield, even before a panel of historians invited to visit Mauthausen. ‘For two days,’ he said, in the final session, ‘we had to fight the SS alone.’ Juan de Diego, sitting beside him, gave his laconic opinion of his fellow Spaniard’s contribution to history: ‘Sandeces!’ (‘bullshit!’)17 Despite all the distortions presented, it is now possible to distinguish clearly the five phases of the liberation of KL-Mauthausen. Firstly, the departure of the last SS on the night of 3–4 May, leaving Kern and the Vienna Feuerschutzpolizei in control. Secondly, the negotiations between Kern and the prisoners’ international committee on 4 May and the night of 4–5 May. Thirdly, the arrival of the two US patrols on 5 May, and the disarming and departure of the Austrian guards. Fourthly, the night of 5–6 May when the camp was in the hands solely of the prisoners themselves, under an international committee. Finally, the return of the Americans on 6 May. Before leaving the Hauptlager, the Americans had assured the prisoners that they would be back quickly and in strength, and by this they meant if not on the same night (5–6 May) then certainly the next morning. They also assumed that the international committee would remain in full control, and that the physical condition of the ex-prisoners, the impending surrender of Nazi Germany, their gratitude for their survival, and the promise that they would be fed and protected within a matter of hours would all discourage them from breaking out of the camp.18 While this seemed logical to the Americans, logic did not necessarily play a role in the context of the Liberation. On the afternoon of 5 May, the international committee held an open meeting and elected Dr Dürmayer as its president. Dürmayer, in the words of his fellow-prisoner Přemysl Dobiáš, was ‘a 100 per cent Stalinist from the time he had taken part in the Spanish Civil War’.19 The question of what action to take was discussed, but it is unknown whether a clear decision was reached. At a meeting of the military staff, Major Pirogov reported that SS units were attempting to cross the Enns. He argued that it would be a mistake for the group to engage in open battle. Its strength would be better used in the pursuit of SS fugitives and in preparation for the defence of the fortress, which had to be held whatever the cost until the Allies arrived. The ex-prisoners certainly had plenty of weapons: although the US patrols had disarmed the men of the Vienna fire brigade and taken their weapons with them, the prisoners had broken into the SS armoury,

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either before or after the US patrols arrived on 5 May, and estimates of the total of armed ex-prisoners run to 3000. Even before Hauptmann Kern and his garrison had left the camp, Juan de Diego and his new assistant, the Czech Přemysl Dobiáš, armed with pistols seized from the SS armoury, took control of the central switchboard.20 Passing himself off as a representative of the Allies, de Diego phoned the village Bürgermeister and ordered him to disarm all German troops in retreat. At the same time he began requisitioning by telephone the hospitals in the region.21 In the course of this, de Diego received a call from a German Panzer commander who asked to speak to Lagerführer Ziereis. Realising at once the importance of the call, but unable to pass himself off as a German, de Diego quickly obtained the agreement of his assistant Dobiáš, a graduate in law whose German was excellent, to pose as Ziereis. The Panzer commander then told Dobiáš that for tactical reasons he wanted to move his tanks into Mauthausen, but he wanted to be sure that Mauthausen was not already in American or Soviet hands. He therefore had to take every precaution. ‘Natürlich,’ replied Dobiáš. The Panzer commander proceeded to question ‘Ziereis’ on his identity: his age, his rank, his appearance. Scrambling but ready (for this information was well enough known) and still maintaining the necessary composure, Dobiáš may have satisfied the Panzer commander with the answers, but when the Panzer commander asked ‘Ziereis’ about his SS decorations, Dobiáš and de Diego broke down, the Panzer commander hung up, and the tanks—which presumably were not on their way to massacre the prisoners—never arrived in Mauthausen.22 Three motives suggest themselves to explain why the ex-prisoners decided at this point to break out of the camp. The first was the frenzy to eat, and go on eating. The second was the desire to wreak vengeance on the fleeing SS whom they thought they might find in hiding, perhaps in Mauthausen village. The third was the fear that the SS guards had made contact with Waffen-SS units and would decide to return to the Lager, defend it as a fortress, and massacre the prisoners. If the international committee did its best to limit egress to the purposes it approved, it should be noted that the Greens were among those who helped themselves to weapons and who made their escape, and only the first motive applied to them. Most survivors were indeed too weak to leave the camp. Some who were just fit enough to walk went no farther than the Danube bank, or the houses along the river. The claim of the Austrian colonel Heinrich Kodré that there was not a single case of indiscipline23 is derided by the report of the Mauthausen Gendarmerie, according to which many prisoners gorged themselves on food plundered in the surrounding countryside, breaking into the Gasthöfer to drink to their hearts’ desire, and then, flown with insolence and wine, entered whatever home or farm they wished, stealing clothes, killing pigs and cattle, especially in the area of St Georgen and Lungitz, in the no-man’s land between the invading Allies. Mauthausen village especially was occupied and at their mercy. Few of the plunderers returned to the Lager, and those who did took care to hide their weapons outside, or leave them with their associates.24 The report surprises only by its mildness. Men driven halfmad by hunger and cruelty are capable of worse crimes than succumbing merely to

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the pent-up longing to eat, and it is probable that worse crimes were indeed committed and that the victims, if they survived, were too terrified to testify. In the Gusen area, the inhabitants admit to being terrified for several weeks after the liberation of the camps by the triple threat from famished prisoners, former Kapos, and SS in hiding. While one Spanish survivor emphatically denies that Russian and Polish survivors at Gusen ever broke into violent quarrels,25 the villager Martha Gammer argues the opposite, stating that a veritable slaughter took place inside the camps among the national groups.26 Many of the Spanish survivors made for the Hauptlager, partly in search of food but especially because they knew that in the Hauptlager the Spaniards had acquired a leading position in the international organization.27 Unlike those at Mauthausen, very few of those who broke out of Gusen returned to their camp. The hunt for the Gusen Kapos was not confined to the camps. Both the Kapos and their pursuers were well-armed, and the Spaniards at Gusen used their weapons to protect certain Austrian farmers who were now the prey of bands of marauding Kapos. This curious situation came about because in the late summer of 1943 and 1944 Spanish prisoners from Gusen had received the unparalleled blessing of being sent to the surrounding farms to help with the harvest, and the farmers had shown kindness to them and fed them. The Kapos, for their great part, were capable of anything. Some took possession of the large Meierhof farm in Luftenberg an der Donau, a few kilometres to the west, with its imposing Schloss, and there the Kapos even engaged in military action against a US unit headed by Captain Ingrassia of the CIC.28 Meanwhile, the hunt continued for the SS and the Kapos who had fled or hidden. In the Gusen area, the US occupation forces arrived about 10 May, and it was Captain Ingrassia who signed all the local documents. The Kapos had less chance than the SS to escape, but a local inhabitant reports that it took the Americans several months to get rid of those who continued to hold out in the woods and the surrounding mountains.29 Of all Kapos, ‘King Kong’, whose physical bulk would stand out even in the Tyrol, was the prize catch, but he had prepared for his survival. He had escaped being lynched at Ebensee by getting a transfer to Gunskirchen, and now when run to earth he saved his neck by turning witness for the prosecution at the Dachau trial.30 In Mauthausen, the international committee was at first hard put to prevent the lynching not only of Kapos but also of collaborators and suspected informers. Unek, the deputy of ‘King Kong’, was sent to the Bunker, to Bargueño’s loving care. Chony, the quarry Kapo, and Marion, the Baukommando Kapo, were seized and executed, in the night of 5–6 May. ‘Popeye’ was beaten to death. Others were dragged to the Appellplatz where the prisoners jumped on their bodies with their clogs, or used their clogs to beat them senseless.31 The Spaniard Tomás Urpí, in Gusen, was standing in front of Block 6 as he offered the hand of reconciliation to a young Asturian whose father he had murdered in Gusen’s legendary showers; the son reached in his pocket, brought out a gun, and shot him dead.32 It is worth noting that the Spaniards were the only national group to pursue, immediately after the Liberation, those of their fellow-countrymen who had collaborated with the SS; those who had murdered or who were accomplices to

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murder were brought before special courts, and if found guilty, sentenced to death and executed.33 But most of the criminal Kapos slipped away as the craving for food tugged harder on the pursuers than the thirst for revenge,34 and Vilanova estimates that fewer than a tenth of the 530 Kapos guilty of murder paid for their crimes.35 The search for the SS guards in flight was a futile gesture until the Americans arrived and could offer them the necessary logistical help, but the question of defending the Hauptlager against the possible return of the SS produced the one great enduring myth of the Liberation. Many a Mauthausen survivor has been painfully embarrassed by the vain pretensions of the old Stalinists, which continue even today, and will not end until all are dead. Just as the Stalinist line is that Mauthausen was not liberated by the Americans but liberated itself, so it insists that an important military engagement was fought on the banks of the Danube. Émile Valley asserts, understandably, that the night of 5–6 May was the most anguished that those in Mauthausen ever lived through.36 There was reason to fear the presence in the vicinity, on both sides of the Danube, of Waffen-SS units. But the old Stalinists, even if they left the Party long ago, refuse to change their tune. ‘For three days,’ says Manuel García, the former custodian of the Mauthausen museum, ‘the Americans left the ex-prisoners alone to fight the SS on the Danube.’37 Ramón Bargueño agrees: ‘We had to fight and defend the fortress against the attacks of the SS who had fled, and who now thought it would be best for them to return to Mauthausen and be taken prisoner by the Americans.’38 Miguel Malle writes of ‘strong SS units only 10 kilometres to the east and southeast, under the orders of Bachmayer and other butchers…. Imagine what would have happened if Ziereis and Bachmayer and their SS, told that Nazi banners were flying in the village and the Hauptlager, had recrossed the bridge?’39 It is curious that Malle, who commanded the expeditionary force sent to the Enns bridge, considered that Ziereis and Bachmayer were capable of commanding a combat unit. It is equally remarkable that Malle, in the decades he devoted to writing his voluminous memoirs, never learned about the fate of Ziereis and Bachmayer, who found nothing appealing about engaging in battle. The Battle of the Danube emerges as the most cherished single piece of Spanish communist folklore,40 and it becomes more improbable the more it is examined. Manuel García, a leading promoter, has lived in the village for at least the last 40 years without bothering to investigate the matter. The most categorical denials come from the communists’ fellow-prisoners. ‘No military force left the camp to fight the Germans,’ says Juan de Diego. ‘There was no battle on the Danube. The story is pure junk. It’s a communist myth. They didn’t fire at the SS, because there weren’t any SS. What happened was that the Spaniards on the Danube opened fire on one another.’41 This statement, quoted to Marcelino López who insists that he took part in the action, provoked him to such rage that he demanded a physical confrontation with de Diego.42 But de Diego is well supported, by Hermann Langbein who is equally adamant,43 and by the highly respected Catalan journalist Montserrat Roig. Roig reports that a unit of Spanish prisoners who were anarchists, and who had set themselves up in Mauthausen village, mistook the truck in which the prisoner-

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combatants were riding for a vehicle of the SS and opened fire.44 Among the historians, Fabréguet states that a few small groups were allowed to leave the camp on 5 May, among them a Spanish detachment that entered Mauthausen village only to come under fire from the houses; as for the battle on the Danube, he called it ‘very unlikely’, the more so since there was no SS or Wehrmacht units in the vicinity.45 The villagers of Mauthausen who have responded to the question express a wider range of opinion. The present owner of the Taverne on the Donaulinde calls the battle ‘nothing but a joke’,46 but the Bürgermeister of Mauthausen in 1995, Josef Jahn, now dead, reported that there was some action in the village, and that ‘some SS on the right bank fired across the river, killing two children’.47 But Jahn was not in the village at that time. The most concrete support for an action on the Danube comes from the Mauthausen villager Erich Neumüller, who was indeed a witness: ‘The SS were incensed. They were white with rage. In rage and desperation they were firing at random, firing across the Danube at anyone in sight. Their world had collapsed. Their desperate belief that they were of superior stock had been revealed, to them as to their enemies, as a total sham, and now, incapable in mind and body of doing what any true soldier does by instinct—fight to the last — they expressed themselves in blind and senseless rage.’48 It is also possible that the local Resistance responded in kind. The same owner of the Taverne who wishes today to blot out all memory of those years has described what took place on his premises on the Danube bank. As a Gasthof in 1938 it had been requisitioned by the SS, who made it their headquarters in the village, but while the two upper floors were used by the SS for their facilities, the cafe below was still open to civilians. In early May 1945, a group of civilians burst into the cafe in force, ran up the stairs to where three SS families were living, beat them, including the women and children, and threw them through the window, some to their death.49 If all these considerations are taken into account, it is possible then to agree with Émile Valley that the rain-filled night of 5–6 May was for the ex-prisoners the most anguished night of all they lived through; that the international committee set up two defensive belts around the camp, one in the immediate vicinity of the fortress and the other farther afield; that a detachment of ex-prisoners among the small minority fit to fight50 did indeed seize the remaining SS vehicles in the garage and occupy the village, arresting the Nazi Bürgermeister;51 that Miguel Malle personally ordered the arrest of Haefliger of the CICR, who had not left with the Americans but had put up in a Gasthof;52 and that the same detachment took up a position on the north bank of the Enns railway bridge.53 The strategic importance of this bridge, the only one intact in the 135 kilometres between Linz and Krems, and the last escape route for a Nazi unit seeking the safety and opportunity of the Alpenfestung, is not in question, but two aspects should be kept in mind. The bridge was for rail only, and although it included a footbridge, cars had to use the ferry. Secondly, the Nazi escape direction across the Danube was to the south, which meant that the ex-prisoners were facing the wrong direction. The defence of the bridge, which the Wehrmacht had mined, was entrusted to a Spanish-Russian unit under the command of the Spanish captain Espí; the Spaniards were all veterans of

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the Civil War, and were well-armed, though their ammunition was limited.54 Whatever the action that followed, it will never be established as historical fact. Juan Bisbal Costa may already have been killed, the victim of ‘friendly fire’ since he was in the truck fired upon by the anarchist unit in the village, and Badia (always without a complete name) appears in the story like a ghost. But to give the Spanish communists the benefit of the doubt, in the action that night, Bisbal Costa was killed and three of the five Spaniards with him, together with eight Russians, were wounded.55 Bisbal, who in 1936 had been among the first in Europe to fight fascism, was now among the very last to die still fighting it.56 One of the more curious aspects of this affair concerns the appointment of the commander. Most of the accounts have been written by communists, but they disagree dramatically, in point after point. Perhaps the authors felt that an account written in German would never be read by a Spaniard, nor a Spanish account by a German. In any event, none of the communist authors bothers even to consider the evidence of his foreign comrades. As a result, there is a history of the Liberation for each communist party. The Spanish communist authors tell us that the leader of their own national group, formed in spring 1944, was at first Luis Montero, a former socialist railway worker and a captain in the Spanish Republican Army. The command nevertheless shifted, first to Fernando Lavín and finally to Miguel Malle, without the communist authors, even in correspondence written in 1993, ready to explain the reasons other than by a reference to ‘various problems’.57 In his unpublished memoirs, Malle reproaches to some degree his two predecessors in the command. ‘Montero,’ he writes, ‘had to go to Mauthausen village to inspect our positions, but he was to see me before he left for advice on the route he should take and on basic security questions. Unfortunately, it seems that I was absent for a moment from the command post and they left without seeing me.’ The losses sustained near the bridge, he implied, were the result of this mishap.58 Fernando Lavín, sent with a patrol to make contact with the Americans and to hurry them, was fired upon by the Americans between St Georgen and Linz. The Spaniards fired back, whereupon the Americans overwhelmed them, disarmed them, and interned them in a room. When released, their arms were not returned to them. The humiliation rankled.59 Even more remarkable is the way in which Major Andreï Pirogov moved into the top command. When the AMI, the prisoners’ secret military organization, was first formed, in September 1944, the command, according to the Spanish communist authors, was given to Miguel Malle, with Pirogov as his chief of staff.60 The version by the Austrian communist Hans Maršálek does not contain even a passing mention of the role of Miguel Malle, even though it would be logical for the Soviet contingent to prefer a non-Soviet communist in the position of nominal command. The command, writes Maršálek, was originally given to the Austrian colonel Heinrich Kodré, a renowned Mauthausen inmate.61 As the senior military officer in the camp, and with the advantage of his Austrian nationality, it was he who was in charge when the ex-prisoners took up their positions on the night of 5–6 May. But at 3 a.m. on 6 May, Kodré was approached by an armed ex-prisoner who asked him

232 THE NIGHT OF 5–6 MAY

Plate 18 Frau Bachmayer, wife of Mauthausen’s Schutzhaftlagerführer, and their two little girls. All three were murdered by Bachmayer at the Liberation. Photographer unknown; by courtesy of FEDIP.

to accompany him to a barrack where a Russian major wished to speak to him. Kodré complied, and found himself in a barrack crammed with men, most of them armed. Kodré was led through to a small empty room. He was asked to wait. The Russian major who now entered was Pirogov, whom Kodré had never met. The two men greeted each other. Another ex-prisoner served as interpreter. Pirogov announced that he was a Soviet officer and that he was now in command of the camp, and indeed outside the camp. Pickets had been set up everywhere. It was necessary, Pirogov concluded, for Kodré to resign from his command of all military operations. Kodré reflected and concluded that the request was fully justified. He nodded his agreement. The two men shook hands. Kodré then returned and informed Dürmayer of his action. Dürmayer nodded62 and asked him to take charge of the internal administration of the camp. This Kodré declined, insisting that he was not qualified for the post.63 It was a quiet ending to a taut encounter. Pirogov meanwhile installed himself behind the big desk in the former office of Ziereis, from whose window he could look east towards the advancing Red Army.

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Plate 19 Mauthausen’s garage entrance, 5 May 1945, taken from the inside of the garage. The liberated prisoners are tearing down the German Eagle; Haefliger’s white Red Cross car is parked at left. Photograph by S/Sgt Harry Saunders.

Plate 20 Mauthausen after the Liberation. Photograph by Lt. William J.Kiefer, 6 May 1945.

234 THE NIGHT OF 5–6 MAY

Plate 21 ‘Like garbage awaiting collection’ (Lt. David B.Dolese, MD, battalion surgeon). By courtesy of S/Sgt Edward A.Bergh.

Plate 22 The scene in the Sanitätslager. By courtesy of Přemysl Dobiáš.

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Plate 23 Lagerkommandant Ziereis dying, 24 May 1945. Behind him stands Francesc Boix, wearing the armband ‘Spanish War Photo Reporter’. By courtesy of Benito Bermejo.

Plate 24 The body of Ziereis hanged by the liberated prisoners, Gusen, 25 May 1945. By courtesy of Martha Gammer.

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Plate 25 The author with S/Sgt Edward A. Bergh and Leopoldine Drexler, daughter of Anna Pointner, who is showing the position in the wall behind the Pointners’ home where the photographs were hidden. Mauthausen village, May 1995. DWP Collection.

Plate 26 The author with S/Sgts Leander W.Hens and Edward A.Bergh, Leopoldine Drexler and Josef Jahn, the Bürgermeister of Mauthausen, in his office, May 1995. DWP Collection.

Plate 27 Ramón Bargueño of Mauthausen’s Bunker (left) and Juan de Diego of Mauthausen’s Lagerschreibstube (second from left) with other Spanish survivors, in front of the monument to the Spanish dead at Mauthausen, May 1995. DWP Collection.

5 The return of the Americans to Mauthausen

‘A stench that withered grass,’ wrote Major Hill Blalock in a ‘Thunderbolt’ report, ‘fouling the air for hundreds of yards around… Filthy holes, emanating wretched human misery and rank with the stench of death, thrown open to the cleansing air.’ And he added, ‘The men of this division now realize the meaning of Churchill’s words: “We are now entering the dire sink of iniquity”.’1 The three successive waves of Americans of the US 11th Armored Division, and others who followed, all shared the same experience of horror and revulsion as they entered the gates of Mauthausen, all of them encountering first, on the approach road leading to the main gate, the Sanitätslager with its piles of dead and dying. The matter of the order of the Americans’ arrival can at last be clarified, and the credit for doing so goes primarily to a survivor, Pierre Serge Choumoff, and to a ‘Thunderbolt’ veteran, Staff Sergeant Leander W.Hens. What Choumoff and Hens have achieved is to dismantle the persistent claims of Colonel Richard R.Seibel, who as a lieutenant-colonel and executive officer of CCB, commanded the force that entered and later took control of Mauthausen. The claim that he personally reached the camp on 5 May 1945, and (more importantly) stayed there the night of 5–6 May, has disfigured history. By distorting the account, Seibel may well have contributed to the success of the deliberately false accounts, produced by several of the survivors, especially the communist survivors, who gave to the event a self-serving and anti-American flavour. Ramón Bargueño writes as if the Americans were not even there: ‘Thanks to the committee which we had organized, many lives were saved by taking control of the stores and kitchens and preventing pillage.’2 The reason for Seibel’s inaccuracies are hard to assess. As a career officer, he would be expected not to take credit for the achievement of others, and as an artillery officer he would be endowed with a precise mind. But from the moment he wrote to Ray Buch, official historian of ‘Thunderbolt’, in April 1975, when he was only 66-years-old and in no sense senile, Seibel both begrudged the contribution of the men under him and expressed himself in phrases remarkable for their lack of clarity.3 This despite the warm letter of praise sent to Albert Kosiek on 15 May 1945 by Seibel’s commanding officer, Colonel Wesley W.Yale, which ran in part: ‘In particular I wish to commend you for the splendid achievement in liberating Concentration Camp Mauthausen. To effect this liberation against superior numbers required great tact and judgement.’4 On 16 June 1945, a report

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sent to George Patton, commanding Third Army and a four-star general since April, included a further reference to Kosiek: ‘S/Sgt Kosiek’s tact and good judgement on approaching and liberating the notorious concentration camps at Mauthausen and Gusen, Austria, produced results far beyond what might be expected of a unit the size of his command when acting alone…. For above actions Kosiek has been twice commended for meritorious and heroic conduct to include recommendation for the Legion of Merit by Colonel W.W.Yale.’5 The enquiries made by Choumoff and Hens were in both cases inspired by the confrontation in 1995 in front of the American Ambassador to Austria, described above. Hens contacted all the survivors he could, as did his partner Edward Bergh, discussing the matter at the US 11th Armored Division’s reunion in San Diego in August 1995 and sending the author every piece of material found, including many photographs. Choumoff, for his part, prepared a paper which he presented at a conference at the University of Vienna in December of the same year. The paper by Choumoff, a mathematician by training, was of the highest level of investigative scholarship, and it reached the ineluctable conclusion that Seibel had been driven by personal vanity. ‘Since he held the command of the liberated camp,’ writes Choumoff, ‘he seems to have wanted to hold on to the title of Mauthausen’s single liberator.’6 It is now possible to distinguish four phases in the American liberation and occupation of Mauthausen: the arrival on 5 May of the two patrols (KosiekSaunders and Hens-Bergh), and their withdrawal the same day; the arrival of Seibel at the head of a force on the morning of 6 May; the departure of Seibel after a cursory inspection; and the return of Seibel in the late afternoon of 6 May. We have seen that Jack Taylor, a lieutenant in the US Navy Reserve who rose to be captain, had arrived at Gallneukirchen in the middle of the night of 5–6 May. Probably Kosiek, and perhaps Taylor too, as an American officer, reported at once to Seibel. Taylor remembered passing a sleepless night in his anxiety over the safety of the SS records held in Mauthausen by the prisoners. By daybreak certainly, both Seibel and his superior, Colonel Yale, were informed of the reality of Mauthausen. Yale then ordered Seibel to assemble a stronger force and leave at once for Mauthausen. Seibel, in his account, endlessly repeated, refers simply to a reinforcement of armoured vehicles to the patrol, without ever citing the names of the officers involved in the action. It is nevertheless evident that Seibel assigned the task to Major Milton Keach of the 21st Armored Infantry Battalion, who in turn allocated the mission to two of his com panies: the Headquarters Company under Captain Edgar Flemister, and B Company under Captain Elmore Fabrick. It is now possible to assert that the first American officer to reach Mauthausen was Flemister, who arrived with some 150 men at about 10 a.m. on 6 May, followed by Fabrick with some 220 men who arrived at about 11 a.m. The two captains operated independently, so that there was no overall command until Seibel arrived at about 12 noon. At about 2 p.m. Reach arrived with the rest of the 21st Armored Infantry Battalion, and at 2.30 p.m. Seibel left to report to Yale at CC-B headquarters. This

THE RETURN OF THE AMERICANS TO MAUTHAUSEN 239

left Reach in command of Mauthausen until Seibel returned that evening at about 7 p.m. Neither Kosiek nor Saunders returned to Mauthausen, but Taylor did, with the second wave of 6 May, refusing to be hospitalized as he should have been and insisting on accompanying the force. Taylor’s own account suggests that Seibel did not personally reach Mauthausen until 7 May, and insists that he did not take command until that day.7 Taylor is probably in error, and the matter could have been clarified if Seibel had produced a clear and accurate account. We can assume that this second wave, on its route from Gallneukirchen to the Hauptlager, stopped, at least briefly, at Gusen. Both of the US patrols of 5 May (Kosiek-Saunders from Gallneukirchen and Hens-Bergh from Linz) had passed through Gusen. Kosiek had taken the camp guards with him on his return to base, urging the prisoners to remain in place for a few more hours. The prisoners certainly did not comply, and when the Americans returned on 6 May they found the situation was already out of hand. There was nothing at Gusen similar to the AMI in Mauthausen. Some 20 000 prisoners, from 16 countries, with the Poles being the most numerous, had already either broken out or remained in Gusen under no authority. Led by their Kapos, they had appropriated the arms abandoned by the fleeing SS and terrorized the camp. The fights that had broken out among ex-prisoners had left many dead, at the very moment of their liberation. The food depots and supplies were pillaged. In their frenzy to eat, many made for Mauthausen. Thousands of others headed for Linz and were stopped at Urfahr by a battalion of the US 328th Infantry Regiment, which had great difficulty in controlling them. Others, such as Amadeo Cinca Vendrell, changed their rags for civilian clothes and found their way to Linz, and from there to Innsbruck. Inside Gusen, the Americans found Blocks which had been sealed shut by the retreating SS, leaving the inmates without food or water; when they were opened, it was rare to find even two prisoners in any Block still alive. Some of the Kapos responsible for crimes under the SS barricaded themselves in Block 32, before deciding to kill themselves; others were torn apart by the prisoners they had tormented. Some of the ex-prisoners worked actively to prevent this slide into anarchy. An Austrian witness, Josef Nischelwitzer, attests to the role of the Spanish ex-prisoners in maintaining order. ‘I know of a whole series of cases,’ he wrote, ‘in which German-speaking Spaniards went to the help of those about to be lynched. I saw with my own eyes how the Spaniards, who first made sure they had sufficient authority, weapons, and sentry posts, took control of an armoured car and drove up to Block 28 in the Revier in order to rescue some German-speaking ex-prisoners who had incurred the hatred of certain Poles and were in mortal danger.’8 Continuing on to the Hauptlager and reaching it a little before noon, the Americans of the second wave found the camp guarded by the former inmates who were placed at strategic positions of defence, armed with German light weapons seized from the SS armoury; search patrols were also noticed fanning out in search of the fugitive SS.9 Passing through the gates, the Americans received the same ecstatic welcome that Kosiek’s patrol had received, especially since this time the Americans

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arrived with tanks. Overnight the Spanish ex-prisoners had manufactured a large white cloth with words of welcome, unapologetically in Spanish, to the Allied liberators; it was draped over the main gate, on the inside of the wall, which better served the interests of the photographers recording the event.10 Seibel’s reinforced patrol included Basil A.Jackson, the public relations photographer for ‘Thunderbolt’, whom Dager had sent from Division headquarters, although the Spanish ex-prisoner Francesc Boix is also credited with taking photographs of the scene. Jackson’s assignment was in accordance with orders from Eisenhower at SHAEF; after his visit to Ohrdruf with Bradley and Patton, Eisenhower wanted a full photographic record of the Liberation, which required a reenactment, without the presence of Kosiek or Saunders, of the arrival of Kosiek’s platoon the day before.11 The more widely circulated photographs, however, depict Seibel walking in through the main gate and an open Sherman tank inside the gate, in each case surrounded by hundreds of cheering ex-prisoners. If hundreds cheered, and laughed and sang, for thousands it was already too late. An inmate doctor has affirmed that at the time the SS left Mauthausen there was no water left at all.12 Seven hundred corpses lay rotting in the alleys, awaiting burial or incineration. Among the living, many who had waited so long for this moment now lacked the emotional power either to laugh or weep, being instead barely conscious in their joy, while joy itself could be a cause of death, the sudden release from tension proving fatal to some prisoners.13 More than 450 survivors continued to die every day until 10 May. According to the last roll-call taken by the SS, on 4 May 1945, Mauthausen’s total prisoner population stood at 66 534, including 1734 women.14 At that time there were still 264 Green and 120 Black Kapos.15 By 11 May the number of ex-prisoners evacuated from Mauthausen proper had far exceeded the number of ex-prisoners who had arrived, with the result that the camp then contained only 15 211 men and 2079 women; of the men, 14 741 were Reds and 470 Greens— whether former Kapos or not, but surviving Green Kapos would be rare, now that retribution had begun.16 Many of the Americans present have attested to their reaction. The condition of the prisoners, the pervasive stench, the sight of the dead piled up like cordwood caused many of the troops to become violently ill.17 The Spanish prisoner Miguel Malle observed that the effect drove some of the Americans to the point of madness: ‘It was now they who, in their fury, were ready to rush off in the search—the hunt— for the SS responsible for all this.’18 Dr David B.Dolese, battalion surgeon for the 55th Armored Infantry Battalion of ‘Thunderbolt’, visited the Hauptlager and described the horrors he saw as the most shocking and disturbing experiences of his lifetime, ‘a living hell’ which, he added, he was seeing only when it was no longer in operation.19 Colonel Nathaniel Kutcher describes the scene when the bodies were picked up, still living but incontinent, and the excrement oozed out of them. The American soldiers flinched, some vomited, until an American officer joined in the lifting of the bodies and set the necessary example. As the officer’s uniform became spattered with excrement and urine, the men carried out their duty.20

THE RETURN OF THE AMERICANS TO MAUTHAUSEN 241

Seibel’s immediate task was to take and maintain control of the camp. Once again, his report leaves the chronology of events unclear. If, as he says, 18 000 prisoners gathered in the Appellplatz on the morning of 6 May, he realized that his force of 500 men was too small to face such a confrontation, but he ordered his troops to fix bayonets and form a phalanx. The ex-prisoners were then forced off the roll-call square and the alleys and into their barracks. Having thus gathered ‘sufficient information on the layout of the camp and the number and condition of the inmates’, Seibel left Mauthausen to return to his base at Gallneukirchen, where he reported by phone to Dager at Division headquarters. This meant that Seibel left Major Reach in command on that difficult afternoon of 6 May, but Seibel makes no mention of Keach. Instead, he reports that Dager ordered him to return to the camp with sufficient troops, medical personnel and supplies to take command. According to Seibel, he arrived back at the Hauptlager at 5.30 p.m. to find it in a state of bedlam, with prisoners running in all directions. Which is to say that Major Keach had lost control to the inmates. We can assume that it was at this point, and not during his first arrival in the morning, that Seibel, with a battalion to support him, made his way along the parapet that overlooks the SS garage, past Bachmayer’s former office, and walked into the office at the end, the office where Ziereis had ruled for almost the whole life of Mauthausen. Fine panelled wood cupboards covered the walls, and to the left, beside a double window that overlooked the Danube, stood Ziereis’ huge desk in the same fine wood. On the opposite side was a divan (which Seibel was to use) beside another double window, protected like the other by metal bars. Seated behind the desk as Seibel entered was Major Andreï Pirogov. Pirogov told Seibel that he, Pirogov, was now in command of the camp, and that the Soviet exprisoners intended him to remain so. As Pirogov refused to move from the desk, Seibel drew out his revolver and levelled it against Pirogov’s head, ordering his men to escort Pirogov and his subordinates to the Soviet compound. Pirogov then complied.21 Seibel’s humiliation of Pirogov may have been necessary from a military point of view, but it could not have helped him much in the political climate of the camp, where the communists were in the ascendant. To maintain order, to put an end to lynching and other acts of private revenge, Seibel needed the cooperation of the exprisoners’ international committee, headed by the communist Dr Dürmayer. On the advice of Jack Taylor and two Czech ex-prisoners (Prof. Dr Vratislav Busek of Prague’s Faculty of Law, and Franz Marsik, a former import-export merchant in Prague), Seibel quickly concluded that the international committee was selfappointed and nothing more than a communist front,22 and he attempted to change it. He even hoped to replace Dürmayer with Taylor, who was liked by many and was eager to serve, but the opposition he faced forced Taylor to withdraw. Seibel still tried to get Dürmayer to resign, on the grounds that Dürmayer was German. Since Dürmayer was in fact Austrian, some ex-prisoners assumed that Seibel was making no distinction between Germans and Austrians and considered all of them unfit to serve as the committee’s president,23 but Seibel’s real reason was

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undoubtedly based on ideology. In any event, Seibel’s attempt to impose his will on the committee merely added to the friction, with the committee then claiming that ‘an immense number’ of ex-prisoners vehemently denounced the measures taken by the American commandant.24 The first question that Seibel had to address was that of lynch justice. Pirogov told Seibel when they first met that he had set up a tribunal for the execution of certain Kapos.25 The previous night four Kapos in custody had had their throats cut. While not much could be done about knives, the work of confiscating the weapons which the prisoners had seized from the SS armoury went on until 9 p.m. of 6 May. Every weapon found was collected, and a Sherman tank was used to destroy them.26 But it would have taken more than a battalion, a fortiori more than Major Keach’s force during the afternoon when Keach was left in command of the camp, to prevent every act of personal revenge. After the prisoners in the Bunker had been freed, the Bunker was used by the Americans for Kapos accused of crimes, as much as anything to protect them from being lynched. Ramón Bargueño, formerly its Kapo, was now its custodian. Returning to the Bunker on one occasion, he found Ramón Verge, the Catalan male-nurse from the Revier whom almost all the Spaniards considered a traitor, tending to the battered Kapos on orders of the Americans. Enraged that Verge would tend to the criminals when he had failed in the Revier to tend to his fellow-prisoners, Bargueño set upon him.27 In another incident, a Spaniard was a powerless spectator. Antonio García, the Catalan photographer working in the Erkennungsdienst and the man most responsible for the preservation of the SS photographs, has described how an American photographer in US Army uniform was taking photographs of groups of ex-prisoners who were hunting for Kapos. They caught one in an alley and hauled him inside a barrack, where they began beating, punching and kicking him. No doubt they would have been content to beat the man to death. But the photographer reached inside his coat, drew out a knife and handed it to the group. They promptly slit the Kapo’s throat, while the photographer took his photo. He then recovered his knife, wiped it clean, and put it back in his coat. ‘The photographer did not have a cine camera and he needed a dramatic shot for his newspaper,’ explained Antonio García. ‘I saw all this as I see you sitting in front of me.’28 Nevertheless, order was largely re-established when Seibel divided the ex-prisoners into some 20 national groups and housed them separately. The Poles and the Russians were placed in two separate compounds, kept under lock and key, and guarded by sentries.29 If the establishment of order was Seibel’s top priority, the supply and distribution of food and tending to the sick were of equal urgency. Cleaning up the camp was no easy task. ‘I was a combat officer,’ says Seibel. ‘I didn’t know anything about organizing a hospital. I was in an impossible situation. The SS before fleeing had blown up all the facilities, including water and electricity. We had to start from scratch.’30 The SS sports ground was turned into a cemetery, first for 700 rotting corpses and then for 1500 survivors in the Sanitätslager who were too sick to save. ‘I have already buried my entire barracks six times,’ Professor Podlaha told the Americans. The US 11th Armored Division reported that it rushed doctors and all

THE RETURN OF THE AMERICANS TO MAUTHAUSEN 243

available medical equipment and supplies to prevent more deaths, and nurses of the 66th Field Hospital worked alongside the men of CC-B, ‘tending the half-dead creatures too weak and helpless to move out of their own excrement.’31 It was nevertheless several days before two US clearing hospitals arrived and Seibel could empty the Sanitätslager, burning six of the wooden barracks as a precaution against disease. About 5000 survivors were hospitalized. Most of the US troops in the battalion occupying Mauthausen were billeted in tents in a field on the outskirts of the little town. One of them, Sid Goldstein, who knew a little German, still recalls the smell which wafted all the way down to the town. ‘That’s why the townspeople were liars,’ he writes. ‘They claimed they didn’t know of the concentration camp, when inmates told us they had been employed in cleaning the streets every day.’32 On 7 May, Seibel ordered 20 of the leading citizens of Mauthausen, headed by the Bürgermeister and the parish priest, to form up in ranks, and under a US escort they were conducted to the camp to see it for themselves.33 All swore to Seibel that they knew nothing of its operation.34 The worthy villagers of Mauthausen, in whose taverns the SS had been carousing every night for years, all sang the same refrain: all that had happened on the hill came as a dreadful shock to them.35 Meanwhile, some 400 Wehrmacht prisoners of war, all them selected for their skills as plumbers, electricians and the like, were also brought in to restore the camp to running order. Many appeared sickened or stunned by what they saw. What they saw included the remnants of the gas chamber. Seibel reported that they behaved well, but on one occasion they were set upon by the ex-prisoners. The incident ended only when the Americans threatened to open fire. Seibel at once issued a stern rule that the German prisoners of war were to be allowed to work unmolested.36 At the same time, the local villagers were also ordered to help in cleaning up, not only the Hauptlager but the Gusen complex too. On 8 May, the Americans used the potato field known as the Erdäpfel-Acker between Gusen I and Gusen II to bury the dead, forcing identified Nazi Party members to lower the many hundreds of corpses—gently, for their own sake—and compelling the local population to watch.37 The ex-prisoners were delighted to see it, but there was resentment over Seibel’s statement that Mauthausen had been ‘uncovered in the course of a military action, which explains why nothing had been prepared’. It was not forgotten that, in the early afternoon of 15 April 1945, Allied reconnaissance planes had flown over the Mutterlager at an altitude so low that those on the ground could see the men in the cockpit.38 Even more invidious was the spectacle of American officers walking around with cameras taking photos of the dying.39 While the Allied services worked valiantly to save lives, the suspicion remained that, here as elsewhere, more would have been saved if the necessary preparations had been made. According to Jean Benech, a French prisoner-doctor who had volunteered to remain behind when the rest of the French prisoners were evacuated, the Americans fed the prisoners high-fat soups, oblivious to the danger of allowing starving men to decide how much to eat at a time. Glucose serum was tried, but the supplies arrived too late.40

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This complaint still echoes and re-echoes in the thinning ranks of the survivors, whether communist or non-communist. The French dentist Paul Le Caër, certainly no communist, waited 50 years before expressing his bitterness. Le Caër had been evacuated from Schlier on 3 May 1945, in the last group which included 15 Spaniards.41 ‘The American doctors,’ he wrote, ‘knew nothing about concentration camp pathology. They could think only of figuring out the amount of vitamins needed, without thinking of how to reconstruct the digestive system of an undernourished body. Hence the menu on the first day of high-fat rice. The result on the following morning: some thirty cases of diarrhoea or dysentery.’42 As for the communists, they play the issue for all it is worth, even though at Mauthausen it was the German communist leader Franz Dahlem who was put in command of food distribution.43 Ramón Bargueño writes: ‘The situation became unbearable with the lack of food, but the Americans washed their hands of our problem, on the grounds that they were short of transport vehicles. It was the Russians who came to our aid, despite the fact that the sector was outside their jurisdiction. Realizing the seriousness of the situation, they requisitioned whatever vehicles they encountered on the road, formed a convoy and loaded it with all the foodstuffs they could confiscate in the surrounding villages, thus solving our dire dilemma.’44 Miguel Malle, another Spanish survivor of the same ideology, wrote that the food situation improved only when the ex-prisoners intercepted a barge on the Danube, since it carried food supplies of a kind that the prisoners could eat.45 Since Seibel insists that no ex-prisoners left the camp without his authorization, the event described by Malle either happened on the night of 5–6 May or it never happened. Seibel denies these accusations, dismissing them as communist-inspired (which they are), and insisting that the first food distributed was weak potato soup and a small piece of oat bread.46 His division’s report for 7 May states merely: ‘Food was sought from higher headquarters as well as local sources.’ But American soldiers themselves have admitted to the tendency to toss Hershey chocolate bars to left and right as if they were in Normandy. Sid Goldstein writes, ‘It didn’t help by throwing food to them.’47 The fact remains that no real preparation had been made for this situation of mass starvation, and the American soldiers who gave the ex-prisoners their own rations—often everything they had—were expressing their sense of helplessness as well as their compassion. As for the ex-prisoners, they simply did what victims of starvation almost always do: they reacted with a minimum of selfcontrol, eating when they had the chance until they were sick.48 The cigarettes they were given were not smoked, they were swallowed. Efforts were indeed made to reduce the fat-content in the soups, but the proper treatment had not been studied and was therefore rarely applied: starving men and women have to be fed weak food in very small doses, but fed very frequently. It was Patton’s Third Army that had liberated the first (Buchenwald) and the last (Mauthausen) of the SS camps, and for doing so would be honoured ever after, but Patton personally, after visiting Ohrdruf, did not choose to visit Mauthausen. Other officers did, at the moment which counted most: the days immediately following its liberation. Among these, as we have seen, was the battalion surgeon Dr David

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B.Dolese, who arrived with Captain Johnson. Americans seeking information from survivors naturally selected those who could speak English. Such a one was the political prisoner Peter Passet, who had been in Mauthausen and Gusen since 1939. He told them that, in his particular group of 80 German, Polish, and Spanish prisoners sent to Gusen, half were dead within a month and only ten survived the war.49 Passet’s description of the gas chamber in operation was included in the report of the US 11th Armored Division: a witness who had access for a moment to the peephole in the gas chamber saw the victims die in atrocious agony, ‘pulling their hair and scratching their bodies in panic and suffering’.50 Dolese and Johnson also visited the prison in the Bunker, where in one cell two former guards (whom they describe as SS) were sitting dejectedly on a bench. Their swollen faces were covered with bruises. The American officers were told (presumably by Ramón Bargueño, who had taken command of the prison) that they had been caught by the exprisoners and beaten, but had been rescued by the Americans and locked in the prison cell. Two days later Dr Dolese returned to the prison and saw one of the two former guards dangling from the wall. He had so feared that he would be handed back to the ex-prisoners that he had hanged himself. Dr Dolese also heard from the American troops about other former guards who did not escape at the time the camp was liberated. One of these, said Dolese, was beaten to death, and three others were tortured, and he described the torture.51 Assuming these reports to be true, the great probability is that these were not SS guards but unfortunate members of the Vienna fire brigade who had been prevented from leaving with the rest as prisoners of the Americans. The US 11th Armored Division was among the very last Allied units to be engaged in combat, since it was now assigned to the Hinterstode valley in search of the Nazi Werwölfe.52 Since its reports in the weeks that followed covered troop baseball games and the like, and even spoke of monotony, the hunt for Nazi fugitives was presented as a sport, and Major Hill Blalock, second in command of the 55th Armored Infantry Battalion, called it ‘probably the most exciting job in the Division during its stay in Austria’. Since the steep, rugged terrain made it no job for armoured vehicles, horse cavalry platoons were organized, using horses they rounded up in the neighbourhood. The platoons would comb the mountains in three-day forays, but there were few reports of captured Nazi fanatics. Only a small number of SS were captured in the manhunt, but to the joy of all those still in the camp they included Standartenführer Franz Ziereis. Acting on a tip from six ex-prisoners,53 a detachment set off on the evening of 23 May for Spital, in the mountains north of Liezen. Under the command of Chief Warrant Officer Walter S.Kobus, the patrol included three GIs and two ex-prisoners, a Spaniard and a Czech.54 The patrol was crossing open country in the mountainous region of Warscheneck, east of Spital, when they spotted a man who tried to hide when he saw them coming. He was arrested as a suspect. Although wearing civilian clothes and a beard, he was recognized at once by the ex-prisoners. The Americans took him back to Mauthausen where Maršálek and Boix assisted at his interrogation, with Dobiáš serving as German-English interpreter.55 Ziereis cavilled and whimpered

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that it was not his fault, that he had merely carried out orders. A letter which Ziereis wrote from Gusen on 24 May was addressed to his wife Ida56 but was undoubtedly intended to be read by his American captors, who duly intercepted it: ‘My dear wife, you know that we wanted to die together in order to ensure the future of our children. At the moment of my arrest, I lost my nerve and I laid my pistol against a tree…. I beg you to come and tell these gentlemen just how sordid were our rulers in Berlin, the Führer included. Tell them in particular just how low Pohl was ready to sink. Your husband who loves you, Franz.’57 The ex-prisoners began to suspect that this gambit might just possibly impress the Americans, that they would detain him for a long time to extract information, but that in the end they would set him free. As a result, Ziereis was deliberately given a chance to escape, and took it. The Americans opened fire on him, but only to warn him. The Spaniards and Czechs, on the other hand, aimed directly at him, and hit him, once in the left arm and once in the back, the bullet passing through his body. He was rushed to the US military hospital in Gusen, but it was no use: the bullet had perforated his intestines. Lieutenant-Colonel Seibel was an eye-witness to the scene when Ziereis’ eldest son Siegfried, whom he allowed to be present, spat on the body of his dying father, either out of disgust with his cruelty or disgust with his cowardice.58 The next day Ziereis was dead, but not before leaving behind a signed final statement in which he admitted that Himmler had given the order, through Kaltenbrunner, to wall up three of the four exits in one of Gusen’s tunnels and then exterminate the populations of Gusen I and II. Ziereis made no reference to the other camps, and claimed he had refused to execute Himmler’s order.59 His death was painless compared with those he caused, and it denied justice its due process, but post-war events suggest that Ziereis might well have retained or regained his freedom had he escaped and hidden. Hans Killermann, for example, who had been promoted to Rapportführer at Gusen for his skill on the gong at Mauthausen, was never found.60

6 Ebensee The last liberation

If Mauthausen was the last SS camp to be liberated, precisely because it was the farthest from the advancing Allied armies, Ebensee was the last of its Nebenlager to be reached, for exactly the same reason. If every other camp in the SS archipelago had some place somewhere to which the prisoners could be evacuated, Ebensee had none, and convoys of prisoners from other camps continued to arrive, even in May 1945: four convoys on 3 May,1 and two, both from Neuengamme and totalling 420 prisoners, on 4 May.2 This brought the total of prisoners at Ebensee on that day to 16 468,3 a third of whom were dying in the Sanitätslager. Of all the liberations, that of Ebensee was the most dramatic, and not because it was the very last of all. All factors were in place. A Lagerführer, Ganz, who was second to none in bestiality. Two German Lagerälteste who were ruthless murderers.4 A Lagerpolizei, now reinforced in the final days, made up of Greens who were always ready to strike. A mortality rate that in April 1945 reached 4547,5 or one-third of the population of the camp, in a single month. Finally, a resistance movement that was well organized, and if it could not be called well-armed, it had nevertheless found some supporters of supreme value, as we have seen, among the local Wehrmacht personnel. The Czech prisoner Drahomir Barta recorded in his secret diary on 4 May 1945 that, in the late afternoon, the details of the plan to blow up the tunnel were passed to the prisoners’ committee by the Polish group. On the night of 4–5 May, between 2 and 3 a.m., Ganz suddenly appeared in the Schreibstube. None of the prisonerclerks had ever seen Ganz in such a state. He was pale and trembling, and his tone of voice was like nothing they had known. Gently he told them that Ebensee would be defended to the last man, and that, since it would fall under artillery attack, it was best for the prisoners to take shelter; they would therefore move the next morning, after the Appell, into the tunnels. In hindsight, the clerks believed that Ganz was practising his speech for the morning. As soon as Ganz left the office, the secret organization conferred and concluded that the prisoners had to refuse, whatever the outcome. The fateful day dawned. Thousands were the eye-witnesses to the events that followed, but once again, so wide is the disparity in the published accounts that one could imagine that they refer to different liberations. Barta’s diary, and not the popular accounts,6 remains our safest guide.

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The prisoners assembled at 8 a.m. outside their Blocks to march to the Appellplatz, but for the first time their hated Blockältester did not lead them, but stayed behind in their Blocks. They were led instead by members of the international committee, which assembled them by nationality. On the Appellplatz, 5 May was to be the last Appell. 10 000 prisoners mustered, and 6000 prisoners languished in the Revier, but on that morning, for the first time, it was a muster without a roll-call. Ganz arrived, strutting as usual, surrounded by twenty SS with sub-machine-guns, to join the Kapos on the Appellplatz. It was rare for a Lagerleiter to attend, but this was a special day. No doubt he was elated at the prospect of achieving what no other Lagerführer or Lagerleiter had achieved: the annihilation of his entire prisoner population, leaving not a trace behind. While the SS formed a semi-circle around him, Ganz addressed the prisoners. ‘Meine Herren,’ he began. The prisoners reacted in stupefaction. Never, since their first sight of an SS, had they ever been called anything better than ‘Stücke’. Ganz repeated to the prisoner mass what he had said during the night to the prisoner-clerks: ‘We intend to fight the Americans. We need freedom to manoeuvre. You are therefore to wait it out in Tunnel 5, as for any air-raid alert.’ There had been many air-raid alerts at Ebensee, as many as seven in a single day, and the prisoner population had regularly taken refuge in the tunnels, though usually in Tunnel 6.7 Tunnel 5, however, was the largest: designed for the production of synthetic fuel, it was so enormous that the entire population of Ebensee could fit inside. Ganz gestured to Macanovic to translate his address into the customary five languages. ‘Los, schnell!’ he shouted at the muster as the last translations were given. Some prisoners moved, but other instructions swept through the ranks: ‘Stay where you are.’ Those prisoners who had moved returned to their ranks. Ganz repeated his command, and the answer came back, in a babel of languages: ‘No! No! No!’ Never in the history of the SS archipelago had the sound of ‘No’ been heard. Ganz stood transfixed, expressionless, sallow, perplexed, and lost for a reply. He must have known that weapons had disappeared from the armoury. He turned to exchange a word with his subordinates, his small, porcine eyes no doubt measuring the distance from where he stood to the exit from the camp. A sudden eerie silence hung over the field, broken only by the sound of the SS-guards surrounding Ganz as they cocked their sub-machine-guns, while hundreds more watched from the towers or waited outside the wire perimeter. In a matter of seconds Ganz saw his grand achievement called in question, saw it turning into the worst humiliation he could imagine. He walked up and down the ranks, the SS guards around him levelling their guns at the prisoners. ‘Will you or will you not move into the shelter?’ he shouted. It carried a threat, but it was also a question, and for the prisoners it was the first time they had heard an SS give an order in such a form. Again came the answer, ‘No’. Ganz began walking to the exit, then turned, and tried his last: ‘It is only for your protection,’ he cried; ‘the prisoners do not have to go to the tunnels if they don’t want to.’ Again there was no reaction. ‘Then return to your Blocks,’ he called out. The only command they had ever heard on that square after the morning muster was ‘Arbeitskommando formieren!’ Today they were ordered not to the work

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details but to the Blocks, an order that was seen at once as an empty gesture, as if Ganz wanted them to know that he was still lord of the camp. Ganz then made his way to the Schreibstube and ordered that all the documents be collected in sacks and taken to the crematorium for burning. This was a vital moment. The Schreibstube and the crematorium were at opposite ends of the camp, but the SS would make no mistake about carrying out the order. The only chance of saving any documents was before they were thrown into the sacks. Barta and the Frenchman Serge de Moussec waited for their moment. The Frenchman slipped the Totesmeldung to the Czech, who hid it under his shirt, together with one or two other documents. These were then concealed in another emptied fire extinguisher, and others were buried under floorboards. Meanwhile, those that Barta had copied and given to Alois Drabek to hide in the fire extinguisher of Block 18 were also saved. In the afternoon, all 600 of the SS guards, headed by Ganz, drove off from Ebensee in the direction of Bad Ischl. It was widely believed by the survivors that Ganz died in the mountains at the hands of his own SS. Instead, he escaped, and it would be 20 years before he was uncovered.8 The departure of the SS left Ebensee in the hands of the replacement guards made up of Wehrmacht and Volkssturm personnel. The prisoners were still surrounded by electrified barbed wire, and by sentries with machine-guns in the watchtowers, but the Kapos were inside, at the mercy of their fellow-prisoners, and nothing could have stopped the tidal wave of hatred that they now let loose, in a lynch justice carried out under the eyes of the new guards, who had no intention of entering the camp to restore order. Of the 400 Kapos and Blockälteste, no fewer than 52, in Jean Laffitte’s eye-witness assessment, fell victim to the fury of the prisoners. The Lagerältester II Lorenz Dähler was shot dead. Karl the Kapellmeister tried to flee with his sack of gold, but a bullet caught him between the shoulders.9 The Kapo they knew as ‘el Gitano’ had his eyes torn out and his legs broken; whimpering for mercy he found none, and a young Russian lifted a 20 kg rock, positioned it over the Kapo’s head, then let it drop. It cracked his skull like a nut.10 The Kapo Paul Friedl was clubbed to death,11 while other Kapos were thrown into the reservoir, and stoned until they drowned.12 As for Otto, the German Kapo of the Revier, he was so hated that the Spaniards who killed him could not remember afterwards how they did it. Some say they grabbed him in the Revier and cut him into ribbons. Others say they first beat him and then threw him while still alive into the incinerator. Still others, that he was given a dose of the same drug he injected into hundreds of his victims in the Revier.13 ‘The prisoners could not be reproached for their acts of bestiality,’ remarked the survivor Dr Wetterwald. ‘The SS had reduced them to the level of beasts, and now the beasts would devour whomever they could catch.’14 The prisoners of Ebensee thus spent the night of 5–6 May as did those at Mauthausen, in that feeling of freedom mixed with fear. Might the SS return? For those at Ebensee, the situation was worse. They were free in their Blocks, but they were still surrounded by electrified barbed wire and guards with machine-guns in the watchtowers. All night the international committee met to discuss the situation. If

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they were free, if the SS were unlikely to return (as they concluded), the problems were still mounting. Food and water supplies were running out, and they saw themselves facing four apocalyptic threats: starvation, sickness, epidemic, and anarchy. As 6 May dawned, the replacement guards were still in the towers, but at precisely 2.45 p.m. the first Allied troops (two US half-tracks) were sighted on the hill road at the end of the valley. As the last guards abandoned the towers and made for the hills, tearing off their SS insignia, the cry went up: ‘The Americans are in sight! We are free!’ The sentries behind the wire stayed in place. A Russian prisoner called to one of them and pointed to the hill road down which the Americans were advancing, making the gesture of one taking aim with a rifle against his chin. ‘Pum, pum! Coming your way!’ he shouted to the guard. The sentry, an old soldier, turned first in alarm, then with a gesture of fatigue, expressed his resignation. The prisoners laughed to see it. Then followed frantic calls: ‘They’re there!’, ‘They’re coming!’ and, ‘Shoot straight ahead, don’t worry about us!’ The last of the guards now fled, except for those who had risked their lives to help the prisoners. Hauptmann Payrleitner, who wanted to hand Ebensee to the Americans in good order, went out to meet them on the road. At exactly 2.50 p.m., the two US half-tracks, commanded by Sergeants Persinger and Pomante, crashed through the gate. The prisoners in their national groups greeted the Americans, each group singing as at Mauthausen in its native tongue. On the Appellplatz, the Americans and the prisoners embraced— happy men, those who were liberated and those who liberated them. But most of the prisoners at Ebensee, as the photographs of the Liberation show, were beyond the point that they could savour their freedom, or even understand that they were free.15 Some 700 in the Revier were beyond help and died in the days that followed.16 The rest could be grateful: Tunnel 5 had indeed been designated as their tomb. A Spaniard known only by the name of Antonio, while scouring the area, found a locomotive at the tunnel’s entrance packed with five tons of dynamite ready to be detonated; the charge was considered ten times the amount necessary to seal the tunnel.17 ‘No man in the 3rd Cavalry will forget this camp,’ ran the report of Colonel Polk, commanding the brigade. No fewer than 1200 bodies lay around the camp, most of them piled up around the crematorium. An ‘After Action’ report referred to the camp as a stadium of filth and stench in which eating the dead had its natural place.18 Again the mistake was made of giving the survivors rich food, with the same catastrophic effects: many died, even though the Americans tried very quickly to adjust to the situation.19 The chaos reached its apogee in the wake of the Liberation. At least for one day, nothing worked. Water and electricity had been cut off. Masses of prisoners stormed the kitchen and the bakers’ unit. So great was the frenzy to eat that what they could not eat they mindlessly destroyed. At this moment, the international committee was powerless to stop them. At the same time, when the Americans entered the camp, hundreds of prisoners had run out of the gate to pillage the SS barracks, seizing whatever weapons they found. In this situation the old national animosities were

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revived. As at Mauthausen and Gusen, the Russians and the Poles had to be separated. The enmity between them that had endured tacitly right through their captivity flared anew at their liberation, and they had no sooner armed themselves than they opened fire on one another, with some reported killed.20 Where they acted in common was in their treatment of the local Austrians. Following the liberation of Ebensee, reported the French Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Monin, ‘Russians and Poles let loose with murder, rape and pillage to such an extent that the US forces began arming the Austrian civilians and organizing them into militias for their own defence. The Russians and Poles were rounded up and interned in a new camp, where they stayed until Soviet units arrived to take delivery.’21 This new situation placed the US forces in the area in a cruel dilemma. On the one hand, they had to restore order and prevent atrocities, and on the other, they were resolute in ordering the villagers of Ebensee to walk through the camp, view the evidence, and bury the dead.22 Nor were the villagers of Ebensee necessarily moved by the evidence. Colonel Monin reported a scene beside the lake at Ebensee where a group of French ex-prisoners approached some local villagers, addressing them politely, only to be treated, even now, with arrogance and contempt.23 Josef Poltrum, who like Hauptmann Payrleitner had stayed behind, ran a serious risk: he and anyone else in German uniform (especially SS uniform, as Poltrum had to wear) could be set upon by ex-prisoners who would make no distinction between their enemies and their friends.24 The Americans quickly agreed to the formation of a self-government of the ex-prisoners. The Frenchman Auguste Havez was at first selected as chief of camp, but after four days he was replaced by Jean Laffitte.25 Meanwhile, the local Austrian civilians were ordered to bury the dead, and 50 women were forced to clean up the Blocks and then join the staff tending to the sick in the Revier.26 The first evacuation of the survivors of Ebensee left the camp on 16 May, heading for France and comprising 1552 Frenchmen, 245 Spaniards, and 38 others of various nationalities. The Dutch-Jewish Max R.Garcia, meanwhile, stayed with the Americans, whom he had served as interpreter from their arrival. He accompanied them when they entered the town of Ebensee and accosted the local inhabitants. ‘How did you allow such an inhuman place to exist right under your noses?’ the Americans asked the Austrians. They replied: ‘Oh, we had no idea what was going on up there. We weren’t told. We didn’t see it. How could we have known about it?’ Garcia replied angrily in German: ‘Das ist alles Scheisse. Did we not march in our thousands through the streets of your town on our way up to the camp? How many of you showed sympathy or tried to help? Did we not work six days a week in the factory on the hilltop, side by side with your inhabitants? How many shared their food with us? Did you not hear the noise and smell the stench wafting down each day from the camp to the town? What did you imagine was going on up there?’27 An ‘After Action’ report of another division of Patton’s army put it bluntly: ‘The old whine after World War I is with us again: “Wir sind belogen und betrogen worden” (We have been lied to and betrayed).’28

7 The American–Soviet link-up

We have seen that the US forces discovered Mauthausen (and its Nebenlager) in the course of their final mission—mopping up the remaining Nazi pockets and making contact with the Red Army—which drew from Simon Wiesenthal at a later date the bitter but totally accurate statement that neither the Americans nor the other Allies ever set out expressly to liberate a concentration camp. As for the link-up, it took longer than expected. The OSS reported that the Soviet army north of the Danube had turned north-west towards Budweiss in Czechoslovakia, and in its own report for 6 May 1945, ‘Thunderbolt’ expressed its disappointment. In an attempt to make contact, the 41st Cavalry of Combat Command B advanced north-east to a depth of 30 kilometres inside the Soviet Zone of Occupation, its B Troop reaching Königswiesen, where German resistance in mountainous wooded terrain blocked further advance. US aerial reconnaissance that afternoon made their first sighting of Soviet forces 25 kilometres east of Amstetten. The division’s Combat Command Reserve was now moved forward to Zwettl-Niederösterreich in what was described as a ‘blocking mission’, and a battalion was moved up that afternoon to reinforce it. It was not until mid-afternoon on 8 May that the historic meeting took place, the first link-up between Western Allied and Soviet forces south of Czechoslovakia. The 41st Cavalry patrols had reached as far east as Grein, on the left bank of the Danube due north of Amstetten, which was the ultimate eastward advance of any Western Allied force in Europe. The link-up came at Klam, five kilometres to the west, and in the heat of battle. The US unit thus to enter history was a patrol of the 41st Cavalry’s A Troop commanded by Lieutenant Kedar B.Collins. The patrol consisted of an armoured car and three peeps, with the leading peep carrying Lieutenant Gene Ellenson, Sergeant John L.Brady, Corporal Theodore Barton (an Australian from Brisbane who had been liberated from a prisoner of war camp and who was serving as an interpreter), and the driver, Pfc Robert P.Vanderhagen. Approaching them were units of the Soviet 7th Parachute Guards Division commanded by MajorGeneral Daniil A. Drichkin, and between the Allied forces were the remnants of SS Panzer units. In the circumstances, the Americans were about to come under Soviet fire when Brady leaped up and shouted out, ‘We are Americans!’ At the same time, Ellenson and another officer, Lieutenant Richard L.Lucas, set off the identification flares, to which the Russians responded with their own, while they leaped out of their vehicles to embrace the Americans.1 The symbolic first handshake between

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officers took place between Ellenson and Lieutenant Fyodor A.Kizeyev, commanding the Soviet patrol, and half the prize for that historic link-up thus went to ‘Thunderbolt’. At the general staff level, the handshake took place later that evening at Strengberg, south-east of Enns, between Drichkin and Major-General Stanley E. Reinhart, commanding the 65th Infantry Division of Walker’s XXth Corps.2 It was nevertheless ‘Thunderbolt’ that remained in control on both banks of the Danube, with responsibility for Mauthausen Hauptlager and the three Nebenlager at Gusen. The Division’s daily reports give priority to sports events and other distractions rather than to the work of the medical teams or the search for Nazi criminals, but American-Soviet relations were described as excellent. A few shots were allegedly exchanged across the Danube, but several cordial parties were held, and at one of them General Dager received a high Soviet decoration. Relations were so well cemented that General Holbrook commanding CC-A was able to persuade the Soviets to withdraw from the Enns river to the eastern suburbs of Steyr so that the town could be administered by a single occupying power. The Soviets may have yielded on Steyr in order to increase their bargaining power north of the Danube, where the Mauthausen Hauptlager fell just inside the US Zone of Occupation. The two sides met at Schloss Weinberg, with Lieutenant-Colonel Seibel negotiating for the Americans and General Margilev for the Soviets. Seibel again asked the Czech ex-prisoner Přemysl Dobiáš to serve as his interpreter. The Soviets, however, refused to accept any interpreter chosen by the Americans and insisted on the exclusive use of their own, who spoke German but not English. This meant translating from English into Russian via German, and vice versa, which was awkward and timeconsuming, but the Soviets would not have it any other way. At the end of the conference it was agreed that Mauthausen Hauptlager would be included in the Soviet Zone. Dobiáš, who remembers finding time to wander in the castle woods and commune with nature, with everything that that meant to a surviving prisoner, was then called upon to serve as interpreter at a special luncheon offered by Margilev, for whom (in later work) he developed a deep respect. The mood of the luncheon was very cordial, and the Americans joined in warmly when Margilev toasted a Red Army colonel present at the luncheon for his outstanding bravery in the Soviet advance. Under the new agreement, US troops would remain in Mühlviertel, the district of Upper Austria which included Mauthausen and Gusen, only until 27 July 1945, after which the Soviet authorities would take charge of any remaining ex-prisoners who were still too weak to be moved. Lieutenant-Colonel Seibel remained at the Hauptlager for 35 days, during which time he evacuated some 13 000 of the survivors. His relations with his Soviet counterpart, Major Georgi Mashkin, were not particularly cordial, as is shown in the photograph of the two majors taken on 16 May 1945: a dour-looking Seibel stands a yard apart from the podgy and more jovial Mashkin, whom Dobiáš, no friend of the communists, has described in very friendly terms. The friction no doubt developed over the matter of the evacuation. Mashkin had paid at least two visits to the camp, to discuss with Pirogov the preparations for the return of the Soviet ex-prisoners, and 16 May saw their

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departure, with Pirogov taking the salute in a march-past. Hans Maršálek complains that the US authorities, in their fear of communism, denied those exprisoners who were suspected of being communist militants the same assistance in returning home that was given to all others, with the result that German, Polish and Soviet communists had to make their way on foot.3 On this there is no evidence for or against, but Maršálek himself is selective in his reportage. He is content to say that, when the Soviets left on 16 May, they took with them the Soviet ex-prisoners (‘the largest national group in KL-Mauthausen’), while Seibel attests to the callous indifference shown by the Soviet authorities. An entire Soviet army, he writes, was in place opposite the US forces, but no food, medical care or transport was made available to the Soviet survivors. The sick and crippled were left behind in the Lager; the rest were made to march.4

8 The final German surrender

The Führer was dead, Berlin had fallen, and in Austria the remnants of the four German armies that made up Heeresgruppe Ostmark (now incorporated into Heeresgruppe Süd) were compressed into an ever-shrinking space. The formation of Heeresgruppe Süd, under the supreme command of Kesselring, was itself an admission that the south-west (Italy) and the south-east (Balkans) fronts had collapsed. Of the four armies, two (the 8th Army and the 6th Panzer Army) were to the north of the Danube, and two (the 6th Army and the 2nd Panzer Army) were to the south. The propinquity of two armies numbered 6th confused Allied intelligence, and even after the German surrender the US reports show errors. In their final positions, 8th Army under Kreysing had moved north from Ernstbrunnwald to a position on the Czechoslovak side of the border, while 6th Panzer Army under Dietrich was near Krems. To the south, 6th Army under Balck was at Graz, and falling back westward to the Enns river, while 2nd Panzer Army under de Angelis at Klagenfurt was now part of what was left of Heeresgruppe E, on the Italian and Yugoslav frontiers. Each of these armies was now fighting on two fronts. Two points should be noted in the final German resistance in Austria: the enormous disparity in the fighting quality of the units engaged, and the general and virtually total absence of the Luftwaffe. With no planes in the sky, it is little wonder that Luftwaffe personnel were incorporated into field units and, as we have seen, into guard duty in the concentration camps. There was many an indication that the German forces were fighting harder to stop the Soviets than they were to hold the Western Allies, and that when their last hopes evaporated they were anxious to break off action in the east in order to surrender to the Americans in the west. The US forces in Austria belonged predominantly to Patton’s Third Army, which on 4 May received an extra army corps (the Vth Corps under Huebner) when Bradley transferred it from Hodges’ First Army, now in Czechoslovakia. This increased Patton’s strength to 18 divisions totalling 540 000 men, the largest army ever assembled by the Western Allies in Europe.1 On 6 May, August Eigruber, the same Gauleiter who only a week or two earlier had been issuing terrifying threats against those he considered traitors, now became the only Gauleiter in Ostmark to enter into direct contact with the Allies.2 From his

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new base in Kirchdorf an der Krems, 40 kilometres south of Linz, Eigruber made contact with Colonel Smythe, commanding a task force of McBride’s US 80th Infantry Division. Smythe had reached the Steyrtal, and the two men met in Windischgarsten, in the mountains to the south. It was there that Eigruber offered to end all hostilities against the Americans on condition that the German forces be allowed to continue the fight against the Red Army. Smythe followed orders and refused point-blank. Eigruber then asked Smythe for a four-hour moratorium while he contacted Rendulic, commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht forces in Ostmark. Eigruber returned to Smythe with a refusal on the part of Rendulic, but Rendulic had no choice.3 The surrender of Rendulic, at the head of four armies, fell to Wyman’s US 71st Infantry Division, and it was not without its drama. The division had halted at Steyr on the Enns river, in accordance with the Restraining Line. On 6 May it sent out its reconnaissance troop, under Captain Bernard C. Johnson, with no other mission than to make contact with the Soviets. Taking the hill road through Oed towards Waidhofen an der Ybbs, the 1st Platoon, led by Lieutenant Edward W.Samuell Jr., encountered a German dispatch-rider, and in a friendly manner the Americans asked him where they could find fuel for the armoured cars whose supplies were now insufficient for the return to Steyr. The German replied that he would take one of them on the back of his motorcycle to Waidhofen. The armoured-car gunner Charles Staudinger was selected, because he had been born in that area of Austria and spoke fluent German. On the outskirts of Waidhofen they were stopped by an SS major who ordered Staudinger to be blind-folded, put in a car, and driven to Schloss Rothschild overlooking the Ybbs river. Inside the castle, the blindfold was removed and Staudinger was told to wait outside an office. Inside the office an argument ensued, and Staudinger heard a voice proposing that he be shot. Alarmed but resolute, Staudinger burst into the office, made his way to the table around which a number of high-ranking German officers were seated, and to the astonishment of them all, pounded his fist on the table, telling them in faultless German that he was a US soldier who was there to obtain their surrender and their pledge to order all their troops to lay down their arms immediately. After a stunned silence, one officer stood up and took Staudinger upstairs to another office where, after a wait, he was ushered in to meet a tall, imposing figure who proved to be Heinz von Gyldenfeldt, Rendulic’s chief of staff. Von Gyldenfeldt asked Staudinger if he had the authority to accept a surrender. Staudinger coolly replied that he did not, but that his superior, on the outskirts of the town, did indeed. Von Gyldenfeldt then ordered an aide, SS-Hauptsturmführer Bates, who spoke fluent English, to take Staudinger, pick up this American officer, and bring both back to the castle. Staudinger’s overriding interest was to know what level of command had its headquarters in Schloss Rothschild. He surmised that it was higher than a division, but what he had overheard did not include any reference to corps or army, and when he heard the term Gruppe he did not associate it with army group. On reaching Samuell’s platoon, Bates asked Samuell to return, alone, with him and

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Staudinger. Back at Schloss Rothschild, where Samuell was ushered into the presence of von Gyldenfeldt, they were joined by a general with rimless spectacles and a Hitler-style moustache, far less impressive in appearance than von Gyldenfeldt, who proved nevertheless to be his superior, the commander-in-chief Dr Lothar von Rendulic. In the course of the discussion, von Gyldenfeldt informed Samuell that the Soviet lead elements were now at St. Pölten, some 80 kilometres to the north-east. Samuell agreed to inform the 71 st Division headquarters of the Group’s readiness to arrange a surrender. Samuell radioed from the castle grounds and received a quick reply: No officer would be sent to Waidhofen; the senior German general was to come to Steyr. Accordingly, on 6 May, Rendulic gave his last order to his troops—to make their way west and lay down their arms—and late in the morning of 7 May he and his staff arrived in Steyr to formally surrender to Wyman. From Steyr, the German generals drove in their own staff cars, with an MP escort, to Walton Walker’s corps headquarters in Reith, east of Salzburg, where the articles of unconditional surrender were signed at 6 p.m. on 7 May, with an effective date of one minute past midnight on 8 May.4 In effect, no shots were fired on the Western front in Austria after noon on 7 May. What remained was for each division of each corps of Patton’s army to count its prisoners, and to take note of those of special interest. Of Patton’s three corps commanders in Austria, Irwin was north of the Danube, Walker was in Reith, and Van Fleet was in Salzburg. Walker’s XXth Corps took the most prisoners: 323 840 simply in the period of 1–8 May 1945, and it would have taken more; five bridges over the Enns remained intact, and in Walker’s hands, but from midnight on 8–9 May, all German troops fleeing west were forced to return to the Soviet Zone of Occupation.5 Irwin’s catch was nevertheless the most impressive, thanks largely to Dager’s US 11th Armored Division. The division’s Order of Battle Notes of 8 May 1945 show that, together with Organisation Todt and Volkssturm elements, three large Wehrmacht units had surrendered to ‘Thunderbolt’ unconditionally. These were the German 8th Army, with 100 000 men, the 2nd SS Panzerkorps, with 50 000 men, and the Army for the Liberation of the Russian People, with 100 000 men. In the case of 8th Army, its commander, General der Gebirgstruppen Hans von Kreysing, who was holding the Red Army along a line from the north of Vienna north-westward to Trebic-Tabor in Czechoslovakia, sent two representatives to General Dager to ask for safe conduct for his remaining forces through American lines to western Germany. These remaining forces were the XLIIIrd Korps and the IVth Panzerkorps (‘Feldherrnhalle’). The two representatives, Generalleutnant Konrad Offenbächer and Generalmajor Derichsweiler, found that their request could not be considered at any level except that of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces, under Eisenhower, and the order given to Kreysing, as to all other commanders who made the request, was that their forces should remain in place. Bittrich’s IInd SS-Panzerkorps was all that was left of Dietrich’s 6th Panzer Army, and it had shrunk to 50 000 men, but it still included some very well-known

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units which had been in action against the Red Army, and which clearly preferred to surrender to the Americans. These were the 3rd SS-Panzer Division (‘Totenkopf’), remnants of the 37th SS-Freiwilligen-Kavallerie Division (‘Lützow’), the ‘Führer’ Grenadier Division, and the 232nd Infantry Division. Bittrich sent his chief of staff, Major Dircks, who arrived at Dager’s headquarters at 2 a.m. on 8 May to offer unconditional surrender. Colonel Conley, Dager’s chief of staff, refused to accept the surrender of a German force to the east of the International Restraining Line: it had to move further west.6 And so it did, continuing to hold off the Soviet spearhead as it moved to the American lines. Bittrich’s elite force came into Dager’s hands in the area of Pregarten and Gallneukirchen and was therefore held in a camp set up near Tragwein, east of Pregarten. As Bittrich surrendered, the last bridge across the Danube held by the Germans, Stein-Mautern Donaubrücke just to the west of Krems, fell into Soviet hands, and no further crossing was possible after midnight on 8–9 May. Those German troops who tried sneaking into the US zone had to be herded at gunpoint into the vicinity of Freyung, where they were delivered to the Soviets. As for the Army for the Liberation of the Russian People, this was one of five such armies created and commanded by General Andreï Vlassov between mid-1941 and early 1942. Made up of White Russian exiles and Red Army troops who had been taken prisoner and who had volunteered to serve in most cases only in preference to starving to death, it had fallen to ‘Thunderbolt’ on the Czech frontier. Its envoys, representing a White Russian corps headquartered near Budweiss in Czechoslovakia, made contact with Dager on 6 May. The envoys, Brigadier General Assberg and Colonel Pozdniakoff, attempted to negotiate, requesting the condition that they not be handed over to the Red Army. Dager referred the decision to Irwin, who at once gave the envoys an ultimatum of 36 hours to agree to unconditional surrender to the Allies as a whole. A general officer returned from Vlassov on 8 May, agreeing to these terms. A few days later a total of 34 125 Russian prisoners of war were handed over to the Red Army. Colonel Conley, Dager’s chief of staff, concluded his report by saying: ‘The USSR will no doubt bring these traitors to justice.’7 South of the Danube, 6th Army had been similarly torn apart, with Balck moving his headquarters from Graz to Liezen, closer to the American lines. We have seen that ‘Thunderbolt’ claimed among its catch the 37th SS Division (‘Lützow’). This is an exaggeration, since ‘Lützow’, formed only in March 1945 and made up of survivors and stragglers, espe cially Hungarians, had been reduced to a mere brigade even before the Battle of Vienna opened. If Dietrich’s 6th Panzer Army to which it belonged finished up on the north side of the Danube, a segment of ‘Lützow’ found itself south of the river with Balck’s 6th Army, and on reaching the Enns river crossed it and surrendered to Walker’s US XXth Corps. The commander of this Kampfgruppe was, as we have seen, none other than SS-Obersturmbannführer KarlHeinz Keitel, the brother of Hitler’s chief of staff, and his name electrified his American captors. Under interrogation he electrified them even more with the disclosure that Sepp Dietrich, the architect of the atrocity committed against the US

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paratroopers taken prisoner at Malmédy, was not dead, as the Soviets had announced, and as the Americans believed. They could now look forward to taking him prisoner.8 Another famous name that fell to Walker, and more precisely to McBride’s 80th Infantry Division, was SS-Obersturm-bannführer Otto Skorzeny of Hungary. The same division had the further distinction of capturing the 6th Army commander, Hermann Balck. Finally, 2nd Panzer Army, farthest to the south, had by the end of April 1945 been integrated into Heeresgruppe E, in retreat from the Balkans. It now faced four enemies: the Soviets in the north-east, the Americans in the north-west, the British in the south-west, and the Yugoslavs in the south-east. We have seen that the majority of Mauthausen’s Nebenlager were in the north, in Upper and Lower Austria, with those in Lower Austria being evacuated before the Red Army arrived. There were nevertheless some in the south, in Carinthia and Styria, notably Loibl Pass on the Yugoslav frontier. It was in this area that the remnants of the German forces retreating from the south-west front (Italy) and the south-east front (Balkans) were amalgamated into a final defensive wall, with the command given to SSObergruppenführer Erwin Rösener. On 1 May 1945, Rösener appointed a major war criminal, SS-Gruppenführer Odilo Globocnik, to take command of the remnants of 10th Army (in retreat from Italy) and the LXXXXVIIth Korps (in retreat from the Balkans) and to take up position in the heights of Gemona. Globocnik, who was a native of the region, had briefly served as Gauleiter of Vienna and had attained infamy in the last period of the German occupation of Trieste. No fewer than four SS divisions (the 7th, 13th, 16th, and 24th), or their remnants, were now on the southern frontier, and Globocnik at once organized a new force and entrusted its command to SS-Brigadeführer Heinz Harmel.9 On the same day that Globocnik took over his command (1 May), the British 6th Armoured Division under Murray, spearhead of the British Eighth Army in Italy under McCreery, reached Udine, close to the Austrian frontier. Under orders to advance to Villach and Klagenfurt, it at once ran into heavy resistance from Rösener’s forces and especially the Kampfgruppe Harmel. The division also ran into the Yugoslav problem. From 2 May, when the 2nd New Zealand Division under Freyberg reached Trieste and met Tito’s Partisans, Anglo-Yugoslav relations were strained. The Isonzo river had been established as a provisional demarcation line, but Murray had no political advisers with him, and the Yugoslavs were understandably resolved to invade Austria and wreak vengeance on their enemies. Murray crossed the frontier at Tarvisio on 7 May, one day after the British 78th Infantry Division crossed the Plöcken Pass to the west, and three days after Tito’s 14th Division crossed at Loibach on their eastern flank. At Loibl-Pass, Tito’s Partisans broke into the camp and a brief combat took place. The Polish and French prisoners fell on the SS, overpowered them, and shot them without pity.10 But most of the survivors of Loibl-Pass had already been evacuated, and with others from the Nebenlager at Klagenfurt, numbering in all some 900, they were being forced to march towards Villach when they were liberated at Feistritz im Rosental by the Partisans.11

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All that is left to recount is the moment of surrender of the once-proud WaffenSS divisions. Of the 41 Waffen-SS divisions raised by Himmler, no fewer than 15, including several of the very best, found their graveyard in or around Austria. Five of these surrendered on the southern front: the 7th (‘Prinz Eugen’) at Celje, southwest of Maribor, to the Yugoslavs, who executed many; the 24th (‘Karstjäger’), integrated into the Kampfgruppe Harmel, to the British under Murray; the 16th (‘Reichsführer-SS’), partly to Murray at Klagenfurt, and partly to Haislip of US XVth Corps at Radstadt; the 13th (‘Handschar’) to the British 78th Infantry Division to the west; and the 14th, mainly Ukrainian, to the same British division, further north in the region of Radstadt. These last were fortunate to avoid repatriation to the USSR. In the Tyrol, the 17th (‘Götz von Berlichingen’) and the 38th (‘Nibelungen’) surrendered to Devers’ 6th Army Group. To the east of Salzburg, in the vicinity of the Nebenlager at Ebensee, Vöcklabruck and Steyr, no fewer than four SS divisions fell to Walker’s US XXth Corps. McBride’s 80th Infantry Division reached Vöcklabruck on 4 May, capturing whatever existed of the 26th SS Division, made up of Hungarians, and on 5 May, near Lake Attersee, it took the surrender of the 25th (‘Hunyadi’), similarly made up of Hungarians. In the Steyr area, the 9th (‘Hohenstaufen’), on 5 May, and the 1st (‘Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler’), on 8 May, both surrendered to the US 71 st Infantry Division. This last SS division had been reduced from a strength of 19 700 men in June 1944 to a mere 1500 survivors, with only 16 tanks.12 In the more immediate area of Mauthausen, the 12th SS-Panzer Division (‘Hitlerjugend’) surrendered to Reinhart’s US 65th Infantry Division near Enns on 8 May; from a peak strength of 21 300, only 455 men were left. North of the Danube, Dager’s ‘Thunderbolt’, as we have seen, was confronted by three SS divisions. The 37th (‘Lützow’) was the first to surrender, near Freistadt. What was left of the 2nd (‘Das Reich’) followed on 8 May, on both sides of the Danube near Enns. The last of all was the 3rd (‘Totenkopf’) in the forests to the north of Koenigswiesen. Reduced from an original strength of 19 000 men to fewer than 1000 men and six tanks, it did not surrender until 9 May, after which the principle was applied that prisoners of war would be placed under the jurisdiction of the enemy it had been fighting, and the survivors of ‘Totenkopf’ were handed over to the Red Army. Nazi Germany surrendered to the Soviet Union a day later than it surrendered to the Western Allies, and that same 9 May 1945 was also marked by the liberation of Jersey, the first of the Channel Islands to be freed. As for the prisoners in the four camps in Alderney, there were none to liberate, for the camps had all been abandoned and the surviving prisoners evacuated to the mainland. Helgoland was the first to be evacuated and burnt, in October 1943, and Sylt the last, in July 1944. In Norderney, the first contingent to leave were the Jewish prisoners, on 7 May 1944, and the camp was abandoned ten days later, in expectation of the Allied landings. Commandant Adler left for Cherbourg, while command of the island passed to Oberstleutnant Schwalm. On 26 June 1944 Cherbourg fell, and that night the last prisoners in Alderney left the island, except for some 20 Spaniards

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who were employed in specialized work in Sylt. On 10 August these same Spaniards were put in the hold of a small vessel and transferred to Jersey. There at Fort Regent they joined other prisoners employed in destroying the port of St Helier, but they also made contact with the local Resistance, and the Spaniards took an active part in sabotage activity; in the international antifascist committee that formed in Jersey, Spaniards were given important positions. On 27 February 1945, the commander in chief of the Channel Islands, General von Schmettow, was replaced by a trusted Nazi, Vizeadmiral Friedrich Hüffmeier, whose orders were to hold the Islands to the last man, and Hüffmeier distinguished himself in March 1945 with a daring sea-raid on Granville on the Normandy coast. The decision of the Allied leaders not to waste lives on the invasion of the Islands, especially Alderney, that they knew to be strongly fortified was one that had its merits, but the failure to liberate Alderney until 16 May 1945 gave the Germans ample time to burn their archives. On that day a British force commanded by Brigadier Alfred E.Snow arrived to find only a handful of prisoners, including a few British prisoners of war who shouted to Snow, with reference to their guards, to ‘throw the swine into the sea’. Snow instructed Major F.Haddock to take the testimony of witnesses. Among them was the Spaniard Julio Comín, who had worked in Norderney’s barber’s shop, next door to the office of the camp commandant Carl Theiss. The result was that a detailed inquest was opened, and the War Office dispatched Major ‘Bunny’ Pantcheff of MI9 (Intelligence Corps) to investigate the treatment of the prisoners and the allegations of mass murder, not only on Alderney but on the other islands too. Pantcheff was accompanied by Major Gruzdev of the Soviet Military Mission in London, who showed that he was particularly interested in the Spanish survivors, questioning everyone for days. As for those birds which had abandoned Alderney with the native inhabitants, it would be 1950 before they returned.13

9 Punishment and impunity for the SS criminals

The hunt became the search. Few were the SS who, like Ziereis, found themselves caught in the cavalry-style round-ups instigated by the local commanders of Patton’s Third Army. The SS had long studied their means of slipping through the Allied net and obtaining new identities and abodes, with the help of four escape networks of which the most important were ODESSA and Grüne Haus. What is most surprising is that neither Himmler nor Kaltenbrunner, chief and deputy-chief of the SS, made use of them. Himmler proved himself to be devoid equally of valour, spirit, and intelligence. Skulking around northern Germany in disguise, wearing the borrowed greatcoat of a Wehrmacht sergeant, arrested on 22 May 1945 by British troops in Barfelde near Bremen, identified, biting on the capsule of potassium cyanide fitted into a cavity in his teeth, dead within 15 minutes despite the frantic efforts to keep him alive—all of it fell short of the Montague touch. His widow was then arrested, and held as a material witness at the Nuremberg Tribunal.1 His deputy Kaltenbrunner, head of the RSHA, seems to have made equally little provision for his own escape, with the result that he went to trial and execution at Nuremberg. The circumstances of his arrest, given the charges against him, are remarkable. The Allied authorities up to the end of the war knew little about him. His name had rarely appeared in public print, and the official Reich photographer, Heinrich Hoffman, was unable to find in his extensive collection any picture of Heydrich’s successor as head of the RSHA, despite the fact that Kaltenbrunner, and not Himmler, had been entrusted with the investigation of the July 1944 bomb plot and that towards the end he was spending several hours daily with the Führer, whom he had known since their childhood days in Austria. On 5 May 1945, a Counter Intelligence Corps team attached to the 319th Regiment of the US 80th Division discovered at Gmunden that Kaltenbrunner, with Reichsleiter Robert Ley and Gauleiter Eigruber, had passed through the previous week. In Strobl, with the help of the Bürgermeister, the team found Kaltenbrunner’s wife Lisl and their three young children, and escorted Frau Kaltenbrunner to the 80th Division’s command post at Vöcklabruck. In Altaussee the team found Countess Gisela von Westarp, who was Kaltenbrunner’s mistress. An attractive, blue-eyed blonde of 22, she had been working at Himmler’s Berlin headquarters when they first met in 1943, and on 12 March 1945 she had borne

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him twins, Wolfgang and Ursula, in a cowshed in Altaussee; one of the twins’ godfathers was Dr. Karl Brandt, Hitler’s personal physician. The Americans continued the pursuit, climbing the desolate Totes Gebirge to a cabin called Wildensee Hütte. After a certain drama, four men came out of the cabin with their hands over their heads. Two of them admitted they were SS guards. The other two were Kaltenbrunner and his adjutant Arthur Scheidler, who refused to admit their identities. Kaltenbrunner, standing rigidly to attention, presented false papers showing that he was a doctor discharged from the Wehrmacht and held up a medical kit as proof. The identification discs of Kaltenbrunner as head of the RSHA were found inside the cabin, together with luxury food and drink and a large amount of counterfeit American and British currency. The four SS were escorted down to Altaussee, the two officers still holding to their story, until Gisela and Scheidler’s wife Iris ran up to embrace their respective men. Kaltenbrunner and Scheidler were thus exposed. In his subsequent interrogation at Third Army headquarters, Kaltenbrunner claimed that with Hitler’s consent he had begun in 1945 ‘to counteract Ribbentrop’s pernicious influence and to seek a political way out’. In his hope of exculpating himself, he wrote a letter to his wife Lisl which was clearly designed (like the letter of Ziereis) for the Allied censor’s eyes: ‘My own destiny lies in the hands of God. I am glad that I never separated from Him…. I cannot believe that I shall be held responsible for the mistakes of our leaders, for in the short time of my activity I have striven hard for a reasonable attitude, both internal and external…. They ought to have paid more attention to my words…. We have no property worth mentioning. Perhaps the only resource for you will be my small stamp collection…. Was it not my duty to open the door to socialism and freedom as we imagined and desired them?… I have not given up hope that the truth will be revealed and the verdict just.’2 The head of the RSHA had restyled himself as an Austrian gentleman and a true Catholic. After passing through the prisons of Nordhausen and Bad Mondorf, Kaltenbrunner was sent in July to British Interrogation Centre 020 in the outskirts of London. According to an American intelligence officer working on the case, the British gave him third-degree treatment. Kaltenbrunner responded more defiantly than ever, denying that he had held any position of responsibility in the Nazi system, that he had ever been near a concentration camp, or had any connection with Nazi crimes. As a result Kaltenbrunner became the only one of the 21 major defendants at Nuremberg to be transported there in handcuffs. On his arrival in Nuremberg, he was stricken with a cerebral haemorrhage, and it took him three weeks to recover. Before he made his first appearance in court, Kaltenbrunner was interviewed by Peter Calvocoressi. Calvocoressi describes his experience: ‘Our interview was not in his cell, but in a room placed at my disposal. Kaltenbrunner was very ugly, repulsive even, with his facial scars. He would talk, but he wouldn’t discuss. His tone was flat, his discourse banal.’3 The British prosecutor Major Airey Neave also visited him and left the giant sobbing on his cot: ‘I want my family!’4 For the KZ survivors, Nuremberg was their date with destiny. Many were the witnesses who would attest to the ignominy of the SS in the camps, despite the

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irony that, among the 20 that sat on the two benches of the accused, only one, Kaltenbrunner, belonged to the SS. The fault can be imputed squarely to the Allied leaders who knew so little of the character of Nazi Germany. No one spoke more eloquently than did Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier, when she described the reception that awaited every prisoner, her own being at Auschwitz.5 Other survivors of Mauthausen bore witness to particular events. The French inmate Maurice Lampe gave evidence on the fate of the 47 Dutch, British and American special agents murdered at Mauthausen in September 1944.6 Lieutenant-Colonel Jacques de Dionne, together with others who witnessed the atrocity of 17–18 February 1945 in which Dionne survived by a hair’s breadth, also attended to give evidence of that scene.7 Another witness told the court that since KL-Mauthausen was on a hill, the smoke from the crematorium was visible to all the villagers. The most dramatic appearance was nevertheless that of the Spanish photographic assistant Francesc Boix, and none was prouder to participate than he. We have seen that the photographer Antonio García, a Catalan like Boix, had been disposssessed of the photographs he had risked his life to preserve, and the Spanish communist network had given top priority after the Liberation to recovering them from the home of Anna Pointner where they had been concealed. Accordingly, Boix and the two Spanish youths in the Poschacher group, Jesús Grau and Jacinto Cortés, presented themselves at her house and received the package from its hiding place in the garden wall. This secret had been as carefully hidden as the photographs themselves. None of the other Poschacher youths knew anything about the photographs until long afterwards, and it was a year before Anna Pointner told the story even to her husband or her three daughters. Antonio García, of course, remained totally in the dark, and political machinations now began to blur the truth of how the photographs were saved.8 Unsurprisingly, the Spanish communist leaders made sure that Boix, and not Antonio García, would respond to the invitation of the Nuremberg Tribunal to attend and present his evidence, especially the photographs. Boix gave his deposition on 28–9 January 1946, in the same week that Kaltenbrunner made his first appearance. When the SS leader gave his hand to the others accused, there was a noticeable reluctance on their part to shake it; even his German counsel Kurt Kauffmann did not shake it. After entering his plea of ‘Not Guilty’ to all three of the charges against him, Kaltenbrunner then returned to the hospital in an ambulance. Soviet film documentary of the Nuremberg Trial shows him blinking uncontrollably, especially in his right eye, and in a later scene, his jaw is trembling. It has been said by many that the prosecution of the Nazi criminals at Nuremberg was flawed on a number of counts. The prosecution of Kaltenbrunner, the testimony of Boix and the cross-examination of Boix were no exceptions. The prosecutors simply did not know their brief, to the extent that they actually sounded naïve. Kaltenbrunner, in cultivated tones, attempted to deny the authenticity of the documents that implicated him, and insisted (correctly) that he had never set foot in Auschwitz, had never set foot in Buchenwald—without the prosecution pinning him down on Mauthausen, the camp he knew so well. The prosecution could have used

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the sworn testimony of Adolf Zutter, Ziereis’ adjutant, who described to a US interrogator in Linz in August 1945 how Kaltenbrunner, when chief of police in Vienna, paid several visits to Mauthausen, and did not stop his visits when he succeeded Heydrich as head of the RSHA.9 Boix was presented to the court by the French prosecutor Charles Dubost, an assistant attorney-general. The first appearance of Boix on 28 January followed immediately behind that of the widow of Vaillant-Couturier, who was not only eloquent beyond compare but beautiful too, if beauty has a meaning, with the result that, as one observer put it, she ‘had sent the court reeling’.10 Dubost himself emerged from the trial in a swirl of controversy, since he interrupted Boix’s testimony for reasons which were never explained.11 Perhaps worse, his own verbatim account of the proceedings contains ambiguities and outright errors which do not appear in the German transcript. As a result, it is not possible to know if these ambiguities and errors are the work of the less than honest witness Boix or the less than meticulous lawyer Dubost. Boix gave his testimony in French, beginning with the oath ‘to speak without hatred and without fear’. Boix opened by telling the court that he was a Spanish refugee born in Barcelona on 14 August 1920 and interned in Mauthausen from 27 January 1941. Unsurprisingly, he made no reference to Antonio García and in various ways falsified his own role.12 A number of Paul Ricken’s photographs were shown to the court, with Dubost asking Boix to identify them.13 None of the four judges asked for any clarifications. On the following day (29 January 1946), Boix was cross-examined by Ludwig Babel, a counsel for Kaltenbrunner, who put the loaded question to Boix as to whether he had served as a Kapo. Boix replied simply: ‘At first I was an interpreter,’ adding that when he served in the Erkennungsdienst he was responsible for developing Ricken’s rolls of film, among them the roll on Speer’s visit to Mauthausen and Gusen in 1943.14 Then came the dramatic moment when Dubost asked Boix: ‘Witness, do you recognize, among the accused seated on the benches, any whom you saw while you were at Mauthausen?’ ‘Speer!’ retorted Boix without hesitating a second, and pointing at him. ‘In 1943, when he visited Gusen and the quarry at Mauthausen, I did not see him personally because I was working in the photo service and could not get out. But when I developed the roll of film I recognized Speer with other SS leaders.’15 No one in the court asked Boix how, in 1943, he would have been able to recognize Speer. No one asked him why he could recognize Speer but not Kaltenbrunner. Despite two strokes of cerebral haemorrhage, Kaltenbrunner survived the trial, only to be found guilty on two of the three counts (of war crimes and of crimes against humanity) and hanged with the rest on the night of 15–16 October 1946, showing no remorse. Perhaps Goering expressed Kaltenbrunner’s thoughts when, in a recreational walk with Frank while awaiting the verdicts, the Reichsmarschall told him: ‘Resign yourself to your fate. All that counts now is to stand fast and die like martyrs. Don’t worry. One day, fifty years or so from now, when the German people have recovered from their defeat, the day of glory will arrive.’16 This piece of

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advice from Goering became known because Frank, ironically, happened to be the only criminal at Nuremberg to show remorse. The bodies of the 11 men condemned at Nuremberg were at once incinerated and the ashes thrown into the Contwentzbach, the stream that ran nearby. The stream carried them into the Isar river, which conveyed them to the Danube. The ashes of Ernst Kaltenbrunner thus floated past the deserted walls of Mauthausen. Kaltenbrunner’s lowly subordinate Adolf Eichmann had no particular connection with Mauthausen until the survivors of the Vernichtungslager, especially Auschwitz, were evacuated westward from 1944. His name in 1945 was still virtually unknown. As the executive-designate, rather than the architect, of the Endlösung programme decided at Wannsee in January 1942, SS-Obersturmbannführer Eichmann headed the section of the RSHA known as Sipo IV B 4, with IV being the Gestapo, B being Repression, and 4 being the Jews. Eichmann was nevertheless an Austrian from Linz (he lived at Landstrasse 32, on the first floor) who had married the Czech Catholic Veronika Liebl. The Catholic connection would prove most useful. With their three young children, Eichmann and his wife moved in May 1945 to Altaussee, close to the hiding-place of his fellow-Austrian Kaltenbrunner.17 The number of Nazi criminals known to be in hiding in this area between the Salzkammergut and the Totes Gebirge caught the attention of Simon Wiesenthal as he began his lifelong struggle to bring the criminals to justice. In 1947 Veronika Liebl and her brother attempted to obtain a death certificate for Eichmann from the municipal court in Bad Ischl. Wiesenthal, informed of the manoeuvre, succeeded in foiling it by proving that Eichmann had been seen in Altaussee, where Veronika and the children now lived at Fischerndorf 8. When, in 1949, Eichmann attempted to join his family there, he was spotted, but with the help of ODESSA he was able to escape to Italy. In Rome, Eichmann made contact with the Opera San Raffaele, the Vatican’s organization of emigration aid housed in the Franciscan convent of that name on Via Frascati. The organization’s Padre Anton Weber, a priest of the Vatican, provided Eichmann with the papers enabling him to be issued with a Vatican passport, all the while knowing that Eichmann was a wanted man. (In admitting this later, he insisted that he was ignorant of the reasons why Eichmann was wanted.) Eichmann thus left for Buenos Aires, leaving behind his family of four. From the capital he moved to Tucumán, where his family, including his son Nicholas, joined him. Together they moved back to Buenos Aires, where they lived under the name of Liebl de Fichmann. Eichmann found little in the way of employment: he accepted various low-level jobs before deciding to open a rabbit farm, which went bankrupt. But at least he maintained his cover, until the moment in 1953 when Wiesenthal found the first lead.18 The search was slowed by the difficulty of finding a photograph of Eichmann, but in 1959 he was discovered, living in Buenos Aires under the name of Ricardo Klement. The message was flashed by a Mossad agent to Tel Aviv: ‘The driver is red,’ meaning that Eichmann had been located. The killer of millions was on his way to justice. SS-Standartenführer Walter Rauff, the inventor of the mobile gas chamber, was also found, but he certainly was not held. Rauff was arrested in Milan by US troops

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on 30 April 1945, and interned in the detention camp in Rimini. What happened after that is still in dispute. Rauff himself revealed (in a deposition addressed to the Supreme Court of Chile in December 1962) that he escaped from the camp in Rimini at the end of 1946 with the help of a German prioress who then hid him in a Franciscan monastery. With her help he made his way to Naples, and there received further help from the Church to get to Rome. He then spent the next 18 months as a refugee in the Vatican City, living in convents and teaching French and mathematics in an orphanage in Rome. Meanwhile the Vatican made arrangements for Rauff’s wife and two children, then in the Soviet Zone of Germany, to join him. It should be remembered that by then the Nuremberg Tribunal had not only sentenced Rauff in absentia to death but had turned him into a figure of world-class infamy. From Rome, again with the help of the Vatican, the Rauff family moved to Damascus, where Rauff worked variously for a Syrian family and as military adviser to the Syrian Government. In 1949 the family moved to Ecuador, and in 1958 to Chile. There, under his own name, he ran the profitable Sara Braun canned-fish factory in Punta Arenas.19 On 13 March 1961 a warrant for his arrest was issued by the magistrates’ court in Hanover, and France, the Federal Republic of Germany, and Israel all appealed for his extradition. The Supreme Court of Chile, having received Rauff’s deposition, responded that Chile’s 15-year period of limitations had now expired. In May 1984 Rauff died a natural death in Santiago, but three months before he died a top-secret US State Department report, dated May 1947, was obtained by the American historian Charles R.Allen Jr. The report, whose authenticity was at once confirmed by the US National Archives, had been compiled by Vincent La Vista, a US Foreign Service officer in Rome. The report referred to Opera San Raffaelle as ‘the largest single organization involved in the illegal movement of emigrants, including Nazis’.20 The only prerequisites fixed by the Vatican, the report concluded, were that the applicant be anti-communist and able to prove himself a Catholic.21 Franz Stangl and his constant associate Gustav Wagner are best remembered for their infamy at Sobibor and Treblinka, where each served at both, respectively as commandant and adjutant. Their association nevertheless began at Schloss Hartheim, and the failure of the Austrian authorities to bring them to justice when they had the opportunity to do so will not quickly be forgotten. Ironically, the SS leadership did not intend the commandants of the extermination camps to survive the war at all. Stangl and Wagner, together with Christian Wirth and Franz Reichleitner, were among those marked to die. All four had served at Schloss Hartheim, and Reichleitner had also served as commandant at Sobibor. All four were sent to Trieste long before the war ended, and even before 1944. There they were assigned to Odilo Globocnik, whose orders were to send them to their deaths at the hands of the Partisans, whether Yugoslav or Italian. Wirth and Reichleitner ended their lives in this fashion: Reichleitner was killed near Fiume/Rijeka on 3 January 1944, and Wirth died on 26 May of that year in street-fighting in Abbazia/ Opatija, shot either by the Yugoslavs or by the SS themselves. Stangl and Wagner, however, escaped this fate. Stangl in Trieste was made a special supply officer for a

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giant construction project in the Po Valley in which a half a million Italian workers were employed in the building of fortifications for a new strategic defence line. Stangl and Wagner were also sent to Yugoslavia, but, instead of combat, their mission in Abbazia, and on the island of Arbe near Fiume, was to look for Jews and to send them to Trieste, to be exterminated in the prison of Risiera di San Sabba, which continued its operation to the end. With the capitulation of Germany in 1945, Stangl, who was an Austrian born in Altmünster, made his way back to Attersee to stay with a village policeman whom he knew. His wife, the former Theresa Eisenbock, was meanwhile living at their home in Wels with their three daughters, Brigitte, Renate and Isolde (born in 1944), supporting the family by teaching in a preparatory school and working as a secretary in a local distillery. Stangl was soon denounced by an Austrian to the US authorities, and he was hauled off to Bad Ischl for interrogation by the CIC. Stangl gave the Americans his own name, and while they associated it with the activities which Stangl had conducted from Trieste, they did not link the name with Hartheim, Sobibor or Treblinka. At the two extermination camps, Stangl’s subordinate Gustav Wagner had been much more visible, and he had been tried in absentia by the Nuremberg Tribunal and sentenced to death; Stangl, on the other hand, had performed as the unseen methodical bureaucrat. Either way, the CIC failed to connect the two mass murderers with their crimes. Stangl and Wagner were both sent by the CIC to the internment camp at Glasenbach outside Salzburg. There they stayed for two years until, in late 1947, the Austrian authorities found Stangl’s name on the personnel list of Hartheim. Stangl and Wagner were then both turned over to the Austrians, who interned them in a low-security prison in Linz. On 30 May 1948, Stangl and Wagner were working in a prisoner party rebuilding the VOEST steelworks in Linz when they took the opportunity to walk out. They made their way to Graz and then to Italy. Again the Church provided its services. They were housed in central Rome in a Franciscan convent on Via Sicilia, and Bishop Hudal and the Collegium Germanicum again stepped in to provide Stangl with a Red Cross passport. His wife and three daughters obtained their own papers in Berne, and all five sailed from Genoa in mid-May 1949, bound for Beirut and Damascus. After working in Syria for two years as a mechanical engineer in a textile mill, Stangl took his family back to Genoa and thence to Brazil. Still under his own name, Stangl was working in the Volkswagen factory in São Paulo when, in 1961, his name finally appeared on the Austrian official list of wanted criminals. Simon Wiesenthal tracked him down, and on 27 February 1967 he was arrested by the São Paulo police. Extradition followed on 22 June, and his trial opened in Düsseldorf on 13 May 1970. He was sentenced on 22 December to life imprisonment, but the term would be short: on 28 June 1971 he died of a heart attack in the Düsseldorf prison. Gustav Wagner, also an Austrian, had accompanied Stangl to the end, to Rome, to Damascus, and to São Paulo, where he lived, under his own name, on a farm 50 miles from the state capital. Witnesses had described him at his trial at Nuremberg, and afterwards, as a mad dog who could not even have lunch unless he had first

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killed someone with his own hands. ‘It was a kind of fix for him,’ said a survivor. ‘He would smile as he killed. The need would return each day.’ A party held on 20 April 1978 to celebrate Hitler’s birthday was his undoing. Wiesenthal recognized him from a photograph, and he was arrested on 31 May of that year. In the police station in São Paulo he was identified by another former inmate, which caused Wagner to lose his control. ‘We were better than you,’ he snapped in Portuguese, in front of the camera.22 Israel, the Federal Republic of Germany, Poland and Austria all requested his extradition, but on 20 June 1979 Brazil’s Supreme Court refused. Wagner remained unrepentant and defiant, but he nevertheless committed suicide at his farm on 5 October 1980. Justice came to some others among Mauthausen’s killers in the form of two trials, the first at Dachau in 1946 and the second in Cologne in 1966–7. The former was conducted while the United States held jurisdiction in Bavaria; the second, after the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany. In the former case, it should be noted that the United States courts limited their jurisdiction to crimes committed from 1 January 1942, insisting on their lack of competence to examine events preceding the entry of the United States into the war. Thus all crimes committed at Mauthausen from August 1938 up to 31 December 1941 lay outside the purview of the trial. This was particularly galling to the Spaniards, since most of those who died succumbed in the period between August 1940 and the end of 1941. Francesc Boix, who again attended and provided the court with the photographs, asked that Constante appear as a witness. Constante took all the necessary steps to do so, and was supported by Frédéric Ricol, the current president of the Association des déportés français. The United States authorities everywhere received him politely, but they were adamant: no Spaniard was permitted to enter the American Zone of Germany. It was a blunder of the worst kind, and it would not be forgotten.23 Of the 61 SS members tried at Dachau from 13 May 1946 and found guilty, 58 were sentenced to hanging and three (including the only woman, Ilse Koch) to life imprisonment; of those sentenced to hang, nine were pardoned and the remainder (including Pister of Buchenwald) hanged in May and June 1947. A distinguishing feature of the trial was that not one of the accused—including Eigruber, Eisenhöfer, Grimm, Kofler, Ludolf, Niedermayer, Spatzenegger, Trum, Zutter, the three senior SS doctors of Mauthausen, and Vetter of Gusen, all of whom were hanged—had the courage of a true Nazi to defend his actions on ideological grounds. The only motives revealed were those of self-advancement, self-aggrandizement,24 and selfpreservation.25 Nor for that matter did the condemned men, with one single exception,26 show any sign of remorse before mounting the gallows.27 Of the 60 or more Lagerleiter in the Mauthausen constellation, only three— Anton Bentele of Schlier,28 Heinrich Haeger of Gunskirchen and Julius Ludolf of Melk—found themselves in the dock at Dachau. (All were hanged.) Chmielewski of Gusen and Ganz of Ebensee were conspicuously absent. So were Schulz and Streitwieser, and it was many years before justice caught up with these four. Streitwieser had escaped from Mauthausen on 5 May in a sidecar driven by his subordinate SS-Scharführer Hans Bühner. Bühner was discovered when, after going

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to the trouble of excising the SS tattoo in his armpit, he was recognized in 1946 by a Mauthausen survivor while travelling in a train in the French Zone of Germany; he was promptly arrested by the French military police.29 As for Streitwieser, he made his way to his parents’ home near Laufen, where American troops discovered and arrested him. He was interned in the concentration camp at Auerbach, in Bavaria, where some prisoners, for reasons unknown, wore US Army uniforms. Streitwieser appropriated one of the uniforms, added to it the insignia of an American officer, and walked out of the main gate past the American guards, who saluted him. He rejoined his wife Käte and, with false papers taken out in Käte’s maiden name, Klaus Werner Krug became one of the most successful taxi-rank owners in Cologne. Only as a result of denunciations was he finally identified and arrested, on 6 July 1956. Apart from periodical short releases, he remained in prison until 21 November 1966 when he found himself on trial in Cologne in the company of an old friend, Karl Schulz, the Bird of Death.30 After he walked out of the clinic in Heidelberg under the name of Kurt Müller, Schulz had continued with that identity, mainly as porter at the Hotel Nuenzig in Cologne, until the day in 1946 when he thought he could benefit from an amnesty and gave himself up. It was a serious miscalculation: he was arrested, and remained in prison for 20 years, awaiting his trial.31 Between the trials in Dachau and Cologne, and on a scale that attracted far less attention except in France, a French military tribunal convened in Paris in 1949 to pass judgement on two of the Nazi criminals responsible for atrocities committed in Alderney in the Channel Islands. Prior to the trial, Karl Hoffmann, the island’s commandant who had been transferred to the Russian front and taken prisoner, was reportedly hanged in the main square in Kiev in autumn 1945, in front of 40 000 Soviet spectators.32 Adler and Evers, the two responsible for the Norderney camp, were almost the only Germans on Alderney who were ever identified and found.33 Adler was arrested by US forces in Strasbourg on 22 November 1944 and turned over to the French. He and his assistant Evers were held in the Cherche-Midi prison in Paris, formerly used by the Gestapo, until on 21 November 1949 they were brought to trial in the Caserne Reuilly in Paris before a French military tribunal. The trial was clumsily conducted, with the presiding judge poorly prepared, with the result that the court never established an organigramme of the chain of command. The accused and their counsels virtually mocked the prosecution. When the former prisoner Léon Kartun, who was a concert pianist, described the scene at the end of 1943 when Evers had thrown the prisoners’ mail into the fire, Evers replied: ‘The witness is confused. Those letters were not addressed to the prisoners. Those letters were written by their families but addressed to me, and they spoke of the fine treatment, the good food, and the decent accommodation which the prisoners received.’ As the audience erupted, Evers added, inexplicably, that Armand Storper, the ex-prisoner who had been Evers’ interpreter and was a witness for the prosecution, could confirm what he had just stated. Kartun responded with force: ‘I ask to be accused of perjury.’ The judge merely replied, ‘Come, come. We are not here to have fun. We trust you,’ but Storper was not called and Evers’ claim was not

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demolished. As for Adler, he even went to the defence of Evers. When Dr Dreyfus described the beating he had received from Evers, Adler interjected: ‘I don’t understand how the witness can say that he was struck by Evers. If that had happened, the prisoner would certainly have come to me or to the Bauführer to lodge a complaint.’ In the summing up, Maître Morin, counsel for Evers, presented his client as a luckless victim, ‘the last link in the German chain, the last call in the team, the bottom rank…. He had no choice. He did not volunteer for this work…. If there were whippings, it is understandable: they are an essential part of German education…. In every case that disciplinary action was taken—and I have studied each case in turn—in every case there was a reason, and the reason was that the prisoner had broken a rule. Evers suspected Dr Dreyfus of organizing resistance in the camp. The beating was therefore justified in his eyes.’ Maître Mignon, counsel for Adler, followed as if he was determined not to be outdone by his colleague Morin. ‘Allow Adler the benefit of attenuating circumstances,’ he implored the court. ‘He deserves them fully for having had to share this hell, along with millions of other Germans who were similarly dragged into a system for which they were in no way responsible, any more than a leaf is responsible for being driven before the wind.’ Adler declined to speak. Evers said, ‘I have been separated from my wife and children for seven years, and I have lost my house and my belongings.’ Neither expressed a word of remorse. Adler received a sentence of ten years’ imprisonment, and Evers a term of seven.34 As for Chmielewski and Ganz, the former had not fared so well after his transfer from Gusen to Holland. He was accused of embezzling military equipment and was expelled from the SS.35 After the war, he managed to live in Austria under a false identity until his discovery and arrest in 1956. Brought to trial at Ansbach in 1961, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.36 The same sentence was handed down to his henchman Jentsch, the ‘Bademeister’ of Gusen; arrested in Berlin, where he had set himself up as a building entrepreneur, he was brought to trial in Hagen in 1967.37 As for Ganz, in Mauthausen from 1940, commandant of Ternberg from late 1942, commandant of Weiner-Neustadt from May 1943, and commandant of Ebensee from May 1944, the world long believed him dead, shot by his own men in the Tyrolean mountains. In fact, up until 1949 he was hiding in Austria in the home of an agricultural worker. In that year he moved to Freiburg with his wife and their two sons. No one troubled him, and in 1964 he retired, but that was when his troubles began. Information was received in that year that he had remarried and was living quietly in the village of Boos, near Memmingen, in his native Bavaria. In April 1966 he was recognized by a Czech survivor. He was then in Stuttgart, at the head of a large transport company, living under a false name. He was denounced and arrested on 14 November 1967, just as the Cologne trial was beginning, but too late to be included in it. Instead of that, he was brought to trial in Ludwigsburg on 4 December 1967, when the Spanish survivor Angel Quesada gave evidence against him, but in such a climate of terror that his name had to be withheld.38 On 11 June 1968, Ganz obtained a court order releasing him on 20 000 DM bail.

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Werner Fassel, on the other hand, was arrested in September 1967 and found his place in the Cologne trial. For over 22 years he had been living in Schweim, Westphalia, as the widely respected director of a sports associ ation. All that the former Gestapo adjutant had needed to do to conceal his identity was to drop an ‘s’ in his family name.39 The trial of Ganz was rescheduled for autumn 1971, but the defendant pleaded ill health. On 16 October 1972 he was returned to prison and his trial was finally held, in October–November of that year, in Memmingen, near Munich. On 30 October the trial was interrupted by a bomb threat, requiring a bodily search of all entering the court. Among several witnesses were the Frenchmen Jean Laffitte and Roger Gouffault and the Czech Drahomir Barta. As we have seen, Barta had worked in Ebensee’s Lagerschreibstube, and there he had achieved the equivalent of what Climent and de Diego had achieved in the Hauptlager: he had succeeded in removing and conserving numerous SS documents and had kept a diary in which he recorded the daily events of the camp. At his trial, Ganz showed total indifference. If his features had changed through sickness and age (he was then 73), his look of cold hatred was the same as ever. Among the seven specific charges levelled against him was the murder in the summer of 1944 of three young prisoners found sleeping under a Block, and the death by torture of the Italian boy, Danilo Veronesi. The witness Gouffault testified under oath that the murder of the young Italian took place before his eyes. To every accusation Ganz replied that he was absent from the camp on that particular day, or that he knew nothing about it. Ironically, he was indeed innocent in the case of Veronesi, but it made no difference. Ganz was found guilty and given the maximum sentence under the law: life imprisonment. But on 24 November 1972, Ganz produced medical certificates to show that he was suffering from cancer and obtained a compassionate release, allowing him then to appeal against his life sentence. He died, peacefully in his bed, on 25 July 1973.40 The two Spanish Prominenten, Climent Sarrión and Juan de Diego, both attended the Cologne trial as witnesses.41 They heard Schulz deplore in court ‘the senseless hatred of the former prisoners who would like to bring ruin on any of the SS of Mauthausen who are still alive’. The trial, he added, was a staged production: ‘At least 80 per cent of Germany repudiates these trials.’ Neither Schulz nor Streitwieser showed the slightest remorse, and Käte Streitwieser was even found to have suborned some of the German and Austrian witnesses. In the end, on 13 October 1967, Streitwieser was sentenced to life imprisonment, and Schulz to 15 years. Both were then provisionally released, ‘for reasons of health’.42 Schulz and Streitwieser were the grand beneficiaries of the changing times, the ‘new dangers’, the desire to forget the old,43 and that particular fuzziness of mind that claims it does no good to rake the ashes of the past: the Nazis have suffered more than enough.44 This was made even clearer in the two trials of Johann Vinzent Gogl, the first in Linz in April–May 1972 and the second in Vienna in November 1975. The case of Gogl, the Unterscharführer of the Steps who had played a leading part in the murder of the 47 Allied special agents, seems not to have much excited the Allied and

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Austrian authorities. It was not until 1965 that Gogl was uncovered—by Simon Wiesenthal—having travelled no farther than Linz, and it was not until mid-1971 that he was arrested. At his trial in Linz, Gogl faced 23 charges which took three days to read, and the witnesses numbered 20, including Magnus Keller (‘King Kong’). Keller had taken part in the Dachau trial as a witness for the prosecution, and had given evidence that exposed Gogl, in absentia, as one of Mauthausen’s most savage murderers. But at Linz, Keller turned his coat. He could not remember, he said, what he had declared earlier at Dachau, but he was sure of one thing: Gogl always took care to protect the prisoners. Gogl himself did not challenge the evidence, but the jury of eight still acquitted him, unanimously, on every count. At the Vienna trial, Gogl was accused, among other crimes not previously heard, of taking part in the atrocities committed against the 47 Allied agents. This time the witnesses who had been present at Linz, especially those from abroad, refused to attend, determined not to go through the same thing twice. Among them was Keller, who simply sent his deposition. Under questioning, however, Gogl admitted that between the Dachau trial and the Linz trial he and his wife had paid Keller a visit. This made little difference to the outcome. The Austrian jury found him not guilty of complicity in the murder of the Allied agents by a vote of 5 to 3, and on all other charges Gogl was acquitted by a wider margin. This was to be the last trial of a Nazi criminal in Austria. Gogl could retire into middle-class respectability, living at peace in the charming village of Ottnang near Hausruck with his wife and two children, a lover of animals and a master craftsman in his new profession: making clocks. Meanwhile in the Federal Republic of Germany, the last major war crimes trial opened in Stuttgart in September 1991. Josef Schwammberger, a former camp commandant who had also found refuge in Argentina, had been extradited in that year, and at Stuttgart in May 1992 he was imprisoned for life. Between the Nuremberg Tribunal and the end of 1995, according to figures of the Ministry of Justice, 106 178 suspected war criminals were investigated and 6494 were convicted. In 1996, Edzard Schmidt-Jortzig, the Minister of Justice, declared: ‘The German justice system has not covered itself in glory in its investigations of Nazi injustice. The failure of German justice to come to terms with its own Nazi past is especially shameful.’ Many Germans were reported to believe that the reason for that record, particularly in the immediate post-war era, was that the German judges of the day had themselves been Nazis.45 And so it came to pass that of the 15 000 SS of Mauthausen who murdered up to 200 000 prisoners46 in the most ignominious of ways, fewer than 200 paid for it with their lives.

Epilogue

‘Das Vergessen des Bösen ist die Erlaubnis zu seiner Wiederholung.’1 No name entered oblivion after 1945 faster than did Mauthausen. Four Allied Powers carved up Austria, but none wrote or spoke of it. Pierre Daix, who as a Frenchman had been evacuated from Mauthausen by the CICR in April 1945, and who became principal private secretary to the Minister Charles Tillon in the same year, had his own surprise when he called at the Ministère des Anciens Combattants on 2 May 1945. An official who held a list of the SS concentration camps had no listing for Mauthausen.2 Later, when an official of the Criminal Division of the US Department of Justice, Alice B.Kennington, wrote to the Austrian Government for a piece of information, she received a letter back saying that Mauthausen was not in Austria.3 Some French survivors produced their instant memoirs, of widely varying worth, but there was no account by a Spanish survivor before 1969. Many of the survivors were unable even to spell Mauthausen, ‘Mathausen’ being the usual preference, even in print. If ever a place deserved a total study it was this village on the Danube, but political events surfaced to make it impossible. The camp fell just within the Soviet Zone of Austria. In the Cold War that followed, as Simon Wiesenthal has said, the only winners were the Nazis. Then, with the end of the Cold War, interest in fascism, and especially Nazi Germany, revived. The Federal Republic of Germany continued to win high praise for its openness, its candour, and its readiness to provide compensation for most of the victims,4 but its generosity towards the veterans of Nazi military forces, coupled with its refusal to pay pensions to the thousands of elderly Holocaust survivors in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, drew a protest from the US Senate. In a full-page advertisement in the International Herald Tribune of 16–17 August 1997, 82 Senators denounced the payment by the German Government of supplemental pensions to such veterans and their dependents who were living all around the world, including over 3000 in the United States. German law, they added, even extends these benefits to Nazi war criminals living in Germany. In Mauthausen, as elsewhere, by mid-May 1945 the work of saving lives had largely given way to the work of repatriation. At the Linz airport, the top priority of the USAAF staff was given to prisoners of war, so the Mauthausen inmates waited, and

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some were so sick that they died at the airport, waiting. It was at the request of the French prisoners of war that the Mauthausen inmates were allowed, from 17 May, to take the planes. On 7 June, after all the Soviet ex-prisoners had left, the population had fallen to 5200 (including 850 women) of whom 1621 were still under medical care; of these, some 4000 were Poles, Italians, or Germans.5 The Spaniards had by then returned to France via Switzerland, travelling either to Paris or to Lyons and Toulouse. In principle, all the liberated prisoners returned home in civilian clothes which they picked up from the Effektenkammer. They could not, of course, recover their own; the SS had stored each article by group (if the item had not been redistributed or recycled), so each prisoner received a range of articles of approximate fit.6 Some prisoners nevertheless complained that they were issued SS uniforms (with only the insignia removed) because there were no other clothes to give them.7 On 27 July 1945, in accordance with the top-level agreement, the US 11th Armored Division, the liberators of Mauthausen, duly handed over the camp and its Gusen annexes to the Soviet authorities. Before leaving they took care to empty Gusen’s Kellerbau and Bergkristall tunnels of all the SS and Luftwaffe matériel inside, especially the half-finished Messerschmitt-262 jet-fighters.8 The division thus withdrew from the north bank of the Danube and established its headquarters in Gmunden, on the placid waters of Traunsee, where the morning mist lingers on the lake and where the southern shore is linked forever with the horror of Ebensee. The division continued its border duties with the Soviets along the Enns river before rolling back piecemeal to Lauf in Germany, where on 15 August 1945 they finally stacked arms. On 20 June 1947 the Soviet Army transferred Mauthausen to the Austrian authorities. The Soviet general Zheltov and the Austrian Chancellor Leopold Figl officiated at the ceremony, Figl speaking of his own incarceration in Mauthausen and Zheltov unveiling the plaque on the outer wall which lists the dead as follows: Soviets Polish Hungarians Yugoslavs French Spaniards Italians Czechs Greeks Germans Belgians Austrians Dutch Americans

32180 30203 12923 12890 8203 6503 5750 4473 3700 1500 742 235 77 34

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Luxemburgers British Other TOTAL

19 17 3319 122 767

The list excludes the 60 000–70 000 prisoners who were executed on arrival without being registered.9 While the SS had done their best at Mauthausen to destroy the evidence of the gas chamber, they had left the rest of the camp intact. There was considerable debate among the Austrians in the Soviet Zone as to what should now be done with the camp, and the opinion was expressed that it should be demolished. Instead, only the Blocks were demolished, including all the SS Blocks outside the fortress and all but Blocks 1 and 6 inside. The whole of the Bunker complex remained. The camp was reopened to visitors in 1948. Many a survivor hesitated to return. ‘I waited twenty years,’ a French survivor told the author. ‘I was still afraid to go near it. We weren’t even animals in their eyes.’10 Pierre Daix, who had wanted to return as soon as the camp was liberated in order to help his comrades, was refused a visa, and the French authorities continued to refuse it to him until 1955, when the Soviets had left.11 Antonio García returned only once, in the 1960s, with his wife Odette Janvier, a survivor of Ravensbrück. They approached the farm that stands only 300 metres from the Erkennungsdienst where García had worked, and knocked at the door. A lady answered, and he introduced himself. She invited both of them to dinner; he accepted, his wife declined. At dinner he asked her if she was aware at the time of what was happening on the other side of the wall; she replied that it was impossible not to know.12 The ex-prisoner Manuel García Barrado, who was among the handful of Spanish survivors who preferred to remain in Austria rather than return to France,13 was selected in 1963 to serve as custodian of the Mauthausen Museum, retiring in 1983 but remaining active and ever ready to assist visitors. It has long been observed that Austria has lagged behind Germany in facing up to its Nazi past,14 preferring to consider itself Hitler’s first victim rather than Hitler’s first ally.15 Few in Austria wanted to remember that, proportionate to population, there were more Austrians both in the Nazi Party and in the Allgemeine SS than there were Germans. While Austrians made up only eight per cent of the population of Germany after the Anschluss, about one-third of all those enlisted in the Allgemeine SS, from Himmler’s deputy Ernst Kaltenbrunner downwards, were Austrians.16 The change in attitude came only in the 1990s. In Linz, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Liberation, a photo exhibition was staged in the Hauptplatz, with enlargements, so huge that they could not be missed by the passer-by, of such events as the ecstatic welcome given to Hitler by the young girls of Linz as he arrived on 13 March 1938. By 1997, when a group of foreign historians visited Mauthausen as the guests of the Austrian Government, the change was explicit: an Austrian official, under public questioning, freely admitted that Austria had been wrong to misrepresent its past. In March 1998, on the 60th anniversary of

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the Anschluss, both President Thomas Klestil (Kurt Waldheim’s successor) and Chancellor Viktor Klima spoke of the need to acknowledge Austria’s share of responsibility for Nazi crimes, with Klima calling for ‘an open and critical debate so that Austria can draw the right lessons about its past’, and for an end to the myth that Austria was overwhelmed by a foreign power. One cannot escape, even in 1998, the negative impressions that the survivors of Mauthausen form from their encounters with Austrian civilians. As in Germany, it is a generation problem. Hitler’s generation, writes David Hackett, failed the moral test, and to some extent so did the generation that followed.17 ‘It was the grandchildren who would turn this attitude on its head, and insist that Germany’s honour required a frank admission of general guilt.’18 In Austria, where over 600 000 former members of the Nazi Party are still alive in 1998, many of the older generation remain uncomfortable with their memories. Few are the cynics that go to the extent of saying that the evidence at Mauthausen of football games, theatre, musical entertainment, a canteen, all this set in a countryside nec plus ultra shows that the SS spared no effort to make the prisoners’ stay as pleasant as possible, but such people do exist. The thesis of Gordon Horwitz’s study of a ‘town in Austria’ (Mauthausen) is one that the present author shares: that virtually everyone close to KL-Mauthausen was terrified of the SS, but equally every one of them knew of its barbarism. In the evacuations to Mauthausen in 1944–5 of a Vernichtungslager (Auschwitz II) and of certain other Konzentrationslager, and in 1945 of Mauthausen’s own Nebenlager, the evidence could not possibly be hidden. At that point the SS were so desperate that they no longer cared who saw what, so long as those who were witnesses gave no help to the prisoners and kept their mouths shut. The atrocities committed by the SS, it can be written in stone, were known to every villager in Mauthausen village, and since there was a Resistance movement in the village, it cannot be ruled out that it vented its fury on the SS headquarters in the Taverne, murdering those it met. The wall of silence or sullen indifference remained intact. In all the 15 years that he has lived in Mauthausen village, the owner of the Taverne has never heard of Anna Pointner, the Resistance heroine who lived a few hundred yards away on the road to the station. The owner of the Taverne is personally open and cordial, but he is determined to forget, and he harbours his own resentments. ‘For several years,’ he explained, ‘I ran these premises as a general store, before I reconverted it into a Gasthaus. I remember a Jewish survivor coming in, putting oranges into a bag, then starting to walk out. I called him back to pay for the oranges. He turned round and spat right in my face, then left. I didn’t mind that. What I do mind, very much indeed, is the practice now of dressing up the grandchildren of the survivors in little tailored Drilliche. As if the third generation of Austrians could treat the Jews in the same way. As if to tell us that we are quite capable of it.’19 But if the tavern-owner had never heard of his co-villager Anna Pointner, the bravest woman in Austria, Manuel García, the custodian of the museum, had never heard of the Pointners’ daughter, Leopoldine Drexler—though she lives almost next door to him—until the author took him to her house in 1996. There is a surreal

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quality about this frenzy not to know more, out of fear of what it might lead to. I was staying for a time in the village at the Gasthof der Traube, and was having lunch there one day when a villager walked in and sat down at my table. When I told him that I was interested in contacting Franz Winklehner, the villager replied that he knew him well and would be happy to phone him at once on my behalf. In the local phone book he showed me that Winklehner’s name appeared on a special page listing the members of the town council. I then told him that through Winklehner I hoped to make contact with a certain Kern. He asked me for information on Kern. I replied that I knew nothing except that he was a villager of Mauthausen who had been arrested by the Gestapo and sent up the hill. ‘Ah, Kazett?’, responded my friend. ‘That creates a problem.’ ‘How can it possibly be a problem?’ I asked him, ‘the Gestapo went out of business fifty years ago.’ In less than half a minute my friend was up and out of the Gasthof without saying a word.20 The church in Mauthausen has erected a monument in its graveyard to the sons of Mauthausen village who died in the service of Nazi Germany, but there is no similar monument to those who died in the Lager. Gordon Horwitz has reported that the Poschacher firm has now moved out of the quarry business, but this is true only of its operations in Mauthausen village, where incidentally there is now a monument on the Donaulinde, in appropriate granite, to immortalize the name of Poschacher; elsewhere, in nearby Gusen, Poschacher is still very much in the quarry business. The Bergkristall tunnels in St Georgen are now in private hands, and the owner has no desire to open them to the public.21 The former entrance to the Gusen camp is a residence also in private hands, as are all the elegant villas on the Danube built by the slaves for the SS officers. Dr Paul Le Caër, who insists that in the construction of the launching-pad at Schlier a fellow-Frenchman was entombed in the concrete, calls attention to the scandal that the property is still in the hands of the Zipf brewery when it should be a mausoleum. Here some movement towards remorse has been noticed. In 1990, on the 45th anniversary of the liberation of Mauthausen, survivors of Redl Zipf fell into a dispute with the owner of the brewery, whom they continue to accuse of being a former SS, over an allegedly unpaid beer. The matter was not forgotten, and in 1995, during the 50th anniversary celebration when the weather was hot, the survivors found the brewery closed. But on that occasion, the daughter of the former owner, and now wife of the present manager, spoke at a ceremony in the local church in which she appealed for reconciliation and offered an apology for the actions of her family in the years of the Reich. In something of a different world were the survivors of Mauthausen and every other camp who now set out to escape the past only in the sense of their desire to continue living. No one should take this lightly. It was an agony for a survivor, who was in the great majority of cases a former Prominenter, to accept his own personal survival when he knew only too well that he owed it to his being selected as a Prominenter. ‘Ever afterwards,’ says Antonio García, ‘I could not help thinking that if I had not been a trained photographer I would never have survived. I would have

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been just like another García, Antonio García Cano, who was not related to me but whom I had known in the Civil War. He arrived at Mauthausen and lasted just three days.’22 ‘Survivor syndrome’ was a concept that was only now being studied.23 There were those, first of all, who either feared to return to whence they came or took advantage of the invitation from the Americans who had liberated them to work in one or other of their services. Manuel García belonged to both groups. He refused the opportunity to return to France out of resentment for what he had gone through, and because the Americans offered him employment in St Georgen in identifying former members of the SS at Gusen who had disguised themselves as civilians but who were recognized by ex-prisoners.24 Marceline López, from Toledo, worked for a few weeks with the US 511th CIC Detachment. The brothers Juan and Miguel Sempere25 both chose to remain in Mauthausen village, where each married an Austrian; Juan spent the rest of his life there, dying in 1986 at the age of 72, while Miguel eventually returned to Spain. All together, nine or ten Spaniards chose to stay or return to live in Mauthausen village, and another 20 elsewhere in Austria.26 Only a hundred returned to Franco’s Spain.27 Juan de Diego was among the great majority of Spaniards who chose to return to France, in the main group that left on 4 June 1945, but remembers the shock he experienced in once again crossing national frontiers: ‘Our world in Mauthausen had abolished national boundaries, and here they were again.’28 On his arrival in France, de Diego suffered a nervous collapse and was sent to a psychiatric clinic. For many years he never spoke of his experiences to anyone, but around 1955 he met Antonio García again. García told him that on one occasion when he was in the Prominenten’s Block 2 he had looked through an aperture in the window and observed the scene in Block 1: a prisoner hanging in agony from the beam, and a Lagerschreiber sitting at his feet taking notes of his confession. De Diego turned on his friend and told him not to invent: he had seen nothing and knew nothing.29 It is probable that de Diego began to speak of these events only from that time. Casimir Climent was in even worse condition. Traumatized by what he had seen,30 he died insane, but it is thanks to him, through the death certificates he could provide, that thousands of Spanish widows received proof of their husbands’ death and ultimately their widow’s pensions, which they would otherwise have been denied on the basis of an absence of proof.31 A quite different reaction to being liberated was shown by Manolo Santísteban, the brother of Ramiro Santísteban, the present president of FEDIP, the Spanish survivors’ association. In the Nebenlager in Steyr, Manolo was orderly to the Rapportführer. He was also Baldomero Chozas’ closest friend, and when he was transferred, as we have seen, he arranged for Chozas to take his place. At the time of the Liberation, Manolo told Chozas that he would never work another day in his life. At first he went into the black market, working with Americans in France. Bored with that, he went to Spain, to rob a bank, and in the process was shot to death by the Guardia Civil. When the Spanish communists in 1969 brought out their collective work on Mauthausen, it is understandable why their editors, Razola and Constante, gave so little space to the account by Chozas.32 Another friend of

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Chozas, José Sala, who survived Steyr because he was selected to work in the prisoners’ kitchen, committed suicide an hour after the Liberation.33 Others may have suffered less but complained more. Ramón Bargueño remembers returning to Paris in June 1945 and being held in the Gare d’Orsay for three days and nights, sleeping on the ground.34 The Spaniards were directed to the Hôtel Lutétia, which had only recently served the Gestapo and now served as a sorting centre for all returning deportees. The reception that awaited them was another cause of bitter grievance later.35 Very early in their return to France, when the primary concern of every survivor was the recovery of his health and the search for a livelihood, the Spaniards actively sought to bring to justice those who, as Kapos or in other privileged positions, had betrayed their comrades. Such a one was Ángel Chacón, who had worked in the Bunker in 1942 before Bargueño was appointed to it, and was known to have struck the prisoners; at the Liberation he found himself an outcast, and died soon after.36 Even more outcast was Ramón Verge Armengol, who had worked as a Kapo in the Revier. On his return to France he worked as a medical orderly in the Charenton psychiatric hospital outside Paris. Spanish survivors of all political persuasions agree that Verge had done nothing for Mauthausen’s sick, including a group of Czechs who arrived from Prague and desperately needed his help, and that he had worked dishonestly, ‘collaborating with the German Red Cross’.37 Bargueño led the campaign to denounce him to the French authorities. Five or more hearings followed at the Palais de Justice, which ended when Verge, with an acquittal, fled to Munich where he joined the fire brigade, married, and disappeared from view.38 At the time the Spaniards returned to France, the great wave of hope that they would return to Spain in triumph had already dashed itself against the Pyrenees (in the 1944 invasion of the Arán Valley) and had been reduced to a few shallow ripples.39 Many an amnesty would be offered by Franco from 1945 to his death in 1975, but few were the exiles who returned.40 The Spanish communists in particular were aware of their insignificance, especially when their communist comrades of Mauthausen Josef Cyrankiewicz and Artur London returned home to become the Prime Minister of Poland41 and the Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia, and several others, such as Franz Dahlem and Ernö Gerö, were given important positions in East Germany and Hungary. When the Cold War began in 1947, the Spanish communists found themselves in the role they had known before, despised by those of every other party. The battle was to rage even in the survivors’ associations that were now created. Several such associations were created in France, wherever there was a sufficiently strong French presence in the SS camp to warrant their creation, and in the case of Mauthausen the Spanish survivors were included in it from the very beginning. It was, however, communist-dominated, while a separate association, uniquely Spanish, was open to all members of all parties and of no party, and for the Spanish survivors of all camps. This Federatión Española de Deportados e Internados Políticos (FEDIP) was founded on 13 October 1945 in Toulouse (at 7 rue des Arts), with the former Prime Minister Francisco Largo Caballero (a survivor of KL-

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Oranienburg) as honorary president and Emilio Moret as secretary-general. In 1946 FEDIP moved to Paris (at 14 boulevard Montmartre), and later to the premises which became its legal property (at 27 rue de Leningrad, now renamed SaintPetersbourg). FEDIP’s first concern was the health and well-being of survivors who were seriously ill and who had no family to help them. When the Federal Republic of Germany came into being and proclaimed the aid programme for survivors and widows known as B.E.G.—we trust there was no mischief intended in the formulation of its acronym—FEDIP in 1954 sent a team of representatives to West Germany to request that the Spanish survivors and widows be covered. The West German authorities replied that ‘if the Spanish refugees were persecuted it was not on the grounds that they were hostile to National-Socialism’. Without explaining on precisely what other grounds the Spaniards were thrown into Mauthausen and other camps, beaten, tortured and murdered, the West German Government solemnly announced that B.E.G. did not apply to them. FEDIP then contacted the French lawyer François Herzfelder. Herzfelder approached the competent German authorities in their seat in Cologne and found his suit rejected. Appealing to the High Court in Cologne, Herzfelder and FEDIP obtained, at the end of 1954, a rescission of the ruling, and the way was now open for the Spanish survivors and widows to receive compensation from the Federal Republic of Germany. It should not be overlooked that the German Democratic Republic never provided the survivors with a single mark, and for the simplest of reasons: all the Nazi criminals came from the west of Germany, none from the immaculate east. On 13 April 1969, the monument to the Spanish victims of the Third Reich was unfurled in the Père Lachaise cemetery, and FEDIP continues every year to honour those who were, whatever their enemies may wish to say of them, Nazi Germany’s remorseless enemies, who died for being that. Joan Pagès, one of the Spaniards who had been wounded in May 1945 in the action on the Danube, returned to his native Barcelona to assume the leadership of the PSUC, the Catalan communist party. Arrested in 1951, he was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment, but on his release he returned to the anti-Franco resistance. Before his death in Barcelona in 1978, Pagès founded a Mauthausen survivors’ association in that city to match the FEDIP in Paris, but its ideology was communist. Even in 1990, when the two Spanish associations met in Mauthausen for the annual commemoration, they would not mix. The FEDIP in Paris will endure even when the last survivor is dead, but in the early 1990s42 the decision was taken to transfer its archives to the Spanish national archives in Salamanca, ‘so that they could be used by scholars in the future, in Spain where they belong’. A catalogue was drawn up, and a copy of the catalogue retained by FEDIP. Where, then, is the copy? FEDIP’s president, Ramiro Santísteban, does not know. It appears that no inventory of its holdings was ever made, and that the most important documents are held by Madame Ester, the widow of a former FEDIP president, the anarchist José Ester Borrás. Juan de Diego was so angered by the celerity with which the archives were sent to Salamanca, ‘still under the control

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of Franco’s gang’, that he refuses to attend the annual meetings of FEDIP even when held in his hometown of Perpignan. *** What remains to be told is the tale of Antonio García, the man most responsible for the preservation of the SS photographs. As one who has known him for many years, the author feels entitled to speak of him as a man of sober judgement, less emotional than Juan de Diego, but no less accurate in matters of detail and no less fair in his assessments, and of an overall gentle disposition. It therefore comes as a surprise to find so few among the Spanish survivors who are unstinting in their praise of him. Even his friends such as Nates and Santísteban speak as though he was not the man that Boix was when it came to guaranteeing the preservation of the photos. Perhaps the reason for this assessment is the fallout from the steady vilification of Antonio García by the communists over a long period of time. The quarrel will be carried to the death of all concerned, the quarrel that pitted Antonio García against Boix, and then García against the whole weight of the Spanish Communist Party in exile in France. It is not a minor quarrel. García is not a nervous man, but he lives under another name, and even in the early 1990s he still feared a visit from some hired hand. Several of those interviewed, notably Bargueño in 1997, have expressed astonishment that he is still alive. Others, such as Mariano Constante, give the impression that they still follow his movements. The essential facts are beyond the Party’s power to refute. Antonio García was a professional photographer selected by the SS on the basis of his expertise to work in the Erkennungsdienst. Boix was employed later as his assistant, selected by the Spanish communist network not on the basis of his professional experience, which was rudimentary, but on the basis of his communist loyalty. García—and not Boix, and not Constante—alone could describe the work of the Erkennungsdienst, and a summing-up of the work is appropriate here. In setting out to save a print of the most valuable of the photos, García had to limit himself, and the total number was about two hundred. If some major incidents at Mauthausen are missing from García’s collection, it is because they were deliberately excluded by the SS from the pictorial record. The first of these—García calls it ‘a dramatic break with tradition’— concerned the atrocities committed against the 47 Allied special agents in September 1944, atrocities to which virtually the entire camp was witness. There was no photo-record either of the killing of the Soviet General Dimitry Karbychev who, in February 1945, with 150 others, died frozen in coffins of ice. Equally unrecorded were the banal everyday happenings in the Politische Abteilung and the Lagerschreibstube. No photo was ever taken of the use Schulz made of his stove, or the use Bachmayer made of the beam above the heads of the Lagerschreiber. Nor was any photo taken of the Kapos breaking the ribs of prisoners in the quarantine block by jumping on them. García adds for the historical record that any photo of Mauthausen that exists today bearing a number on it was one of the prints or is a reproduction of one of the prints made by García. The negatives bore no number. Ricken’s rolls were all of 45 prints. The number of the film and the number of the

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print were written by hand on each photo. Each carries García’s handwriting; none, Boix’s handwriting. We have seen how García, on his return in early 1945 from a sickness that nearly killed him, confronted Boix over the missing photos, only to find that Boix enjoyed the full support of the Party leaders who had chosen to forget all about Boix’s savage physical assault on Climent. In his attempt to recover them, he went to Tarragó, his immediate superior in the PCE organization in Mauthausen. Tarragó told him to be patient: all would be settled. With the Liberation, García still did not know where they had been taken, and it was two or three years later before he heard about the help given by Anna Pointner. In a 30-page letter which bears no date but which García addressed to Constante in about 1980, García describes his experience at the Liberation: ‘I found myself a prisoner of the Party leaders, who would not let me apply to leave the camp by the gate, so I got out through a hole in the wire in a corner of the perimeter. I could wander through the country and visit certain farms in the territory where the American and Soviet Zones met, two kilometres from the camp, and there on the side of the road stood two tanks, one US and one Soviet, facing each other, with their respective sentries.’43 García was evacuated to Paris two months after the Liberation, and in Paris he could see, and follow, the use the Party now made of his photos. On his return to France, García was sent to a rest-home. At that very moment, the Paris communist weekly Regards produced a special issue devoted to Mauthausen, with one of García’s photos gracing the cover. Regards had enough legal sense to attribute the photo to a private collection (collection particulière).44 The Paris communist daily Ce Soir followed up within weeks with an issue devoted entirely to the Mauthausen photos.45 By that time, with the help of his friend Climent, García had recovered about 40 of his photos.46 No doubt in a state of depression, not knowing what use he could make of the photos he held, García agreed to hand them over to a co-survivor of Mauthausen whose name García did not even learn and whom he can describe only as ‘a Frenchman with red hair’. On his release from the rest-home, García resumed his vocation as a photographer, opening a studio in Paris (at 23 avenue du Parc-Montsouris) and marrying Odette Janvier, a woman of truly outstanding character.47 Boix meanwhile was employed as a photographic reporter by L’Humanité, or so it was said. The comment of Pierre Daix, a fervent Stalinist who abandoned the PCF much later, calls this into question: ‘At Mauthausen we didn’t have any problem with him. But after the Liberation, he never did a thing more. He was sick and died very young, only three years later.’48 Once Boix was dead, the apotheosis began. Among the many hymns dedicated to Boix was that published by El Nuevo Diario of 30 November 1969: In 1941 Boix obtained a post in the camp’s photographic office, bringing with him as his assistant another Catalan, Antonio García… Boix won the respect of the SS by his dynamic character and by his readiness to help them in the black market of photos… The SS asked Boix to take their portraits in

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the absence of the SS responsible for the office…. Francisco Boix, who spoke English and German to perfection, was introduced to certain comrades working in the carpenters’ shop. In 1944 they were able to remove from the camp a pile of prints in four boxes of shoe polish. What El Nuevo Diario counted on most was a mass of readers without the wits to question anything. Decade after decade, the eulogies to Boix continued, and the name of Antonio García was mentioned nowhere. In 1975 Le Patriote Résistant, which sees no fault in publishing anonymous articles, included that of Luis García Manzano, Constante’s comrade in the Klosettreiniger staff, hiding under the name of ‘Luisin’. Boix, he wrote, was ‘a skilled photographer who, already in the Spanish Civil War, had given proof of just how highly he was esteemed in the profession; in stealing the photos, he risked his life’.49 The exclusion of Antonio García reached its zenith in 1995 when the Amicale de Mauthausen in Paris produced a film shown on French television in which Mariano Constante presented a packet of negatives of SS film labelled ‘Vöcklabruck’ in Gothic script on its cover, and attributing the preservation of the photographs—not to communist heroes as such, because the Soviet Union had already been buried—but to the old Party stalwarts, Boix, Grau, and Cortés.50 The upshot of all of this is that the Communist Party won—in the short-term—its vain and futile purpose; witness the case of Manuel García Barrado, the custodian of the Mauthausen museum, who had never heard the name of Antonio García Alonso.51 Antonio García continued to recover (for a second time) a part of his collection. Knowing this, Vilanova, in the preparation of his Los Olvidados, wrote to him four times. García never replied; he had no confidence in him. Vilanova’s book, published in 1969 by Ruedo ibérico, included a massive set of photographs of KLMauthausen but made no mention of Antonio García. García never even met the publisher, José Martínez, who ended his life a suicide. What was the true nature of the conflict between Antonio García and the communist party of which he was a member? It is too easy to refer, as some of his friends still do, to a certain cantankerousness in his personality. García himself freely admits that he was always a critic. Odette Janvier comments that after the Liberation he never stopped criticizing the Party leaders, especially for their attitude that ‘the leaders must be saved, even if it means sacrificing the rank and file; they never forgave him for that.’ Boix, she added, was the exact opposite of García: ‘If Boix had met the Pope he would have called him Papa.’ Santísteban testifies that Boix had so ingratiated himself into the favour of Ziereis that three times he heard the Lagerführer call him Franz.52 García found more than that to criticize in the behaviour of the Party leaders. The return to Toulouse in 1946 of Pasionaria, Stalin’s handmaiden, produced a scene that none present would forget, and many a Party member who deserted the Party later would take that event as the beginning of his awakening. It was her first public address to the Spaniards in Toulouse, García recalls, and she spoke of the leaders—in Moscow. When those who had just

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led the Resistance in France and those who had survived the camps in Germany and Austria attempted to speak, she refused to let them, saying that ‘the Spanish survivors of Mauthausen all collaborated with the SS’. If the quotation is missing from the report in the Toulouse communist daily El Patriota del Sud-Oeste, it was deliberately dropped and it alters nothing: Pasionaria was repeating exactly what she had learnt from Stalin in Moscow. Apart from that, Pasionaria and her clique had their personal reasons: if the PCE was the only communist party to question the behaviour of its members who had survived captivity, it was precisely to avoid being questioned about their own behaviour in Moscow.53 Why, it has been asked, did Antonio García not leave the Party and join the Socialists? ‘I stayed in,’ he replies, ‘in the hope that everything would work itself out. Besides, our experience had turned us into fanatics.’ A year after the Liberation, the PCE sent Luis Montero to see him, to say that Boix had deposited the photos with an agency in order to make personal profit. His price was so high that the Czech Communist Party, informed of it, had sent a report to the PCE calling it a scandal. Montero had gone to see Boix, and Boix had told him that it was none of the Party’s business, since the photos were his personal property. Montero told García that the Party considered this intolerable, and that a meeting would be held at its headquarters on avenue Mathurin-Moreau to which both he and Boix were to be summoned. A day or two later García received the summons, to a meeting at 8 p.m. Boix was there, but not Montero, or anyone else. At 11 p.m., after three tense and silent hours, they decided to wait no longer. The next day Montero phoned García, with various excuses; another rendezvous would be made. But Montero did not call back. He was said to be in Toulouse. Months passed. Montero was in Spain. García understood that the meeting would never be held. Sancho Català visited him to tell him that the Party leaders had no confidence in Boix, but they still intended to preserve him as a hero. ‘Miserable is the Party that needs heroes,’ García remembers saying in reply. Then, on the 20th anniversary of the Liberation, in May 1965, when Boix was dead and García was in hospital, García received a visit from Razola. ‘Things reached a state,’ he explained cordially, ‘in which it was impossible to go back. We know that in large part you’re right, for what was done to you was not very fair. We suggest that from now on, by way of settlement, your name be placed alongside his.’ García’s response was a flat refusal: ‘Neither my name alongside his, nor my name instead of his. I am against the cult of the personality. What counts is that the true character of Boix be revealed, including his behaviour in Mauthausen and his relations with the SS. The immense treasure of the photographs was not something for an individual to capitalize upon for his own exclusive benefit.’54 ‘I had no choice,’ García has said ever since. ‘My counter-proposal, which I continue to maintain, is that the caption should read: “Fotos archivos SS salvadas por las organizaciones de resistencia del campo.” With no names attached. That is the only way to avoid disputes among survivors.’ This period, between 1967 and 1969, proved to be the vital years, for the question of the photos and for the future of the PCE leaders from Mauthausen. Three joint meetings of the PCE and PSUC were held in Paris in 1967–8, on the

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rue de Charonne. Presiding at these meetings was Iglesias of the Politburo of the PCE, who was not from Mauthausen. Also present was a gunman known only by his pseudonym Cagancho. His presence disturbed García. Cagancho was known to have assassinated those whom the Party wanted eliminated, and Cagancho had called in on several occasions at García’s apartment on the avenue René Coty where he and his family lived for 30 years. García had known Miguel Montaner of Toulouse, who with his wife Redemption had been murdered by Spanish communists in 1950, he for being a lukewarm communist and she (the Lady in the Lake) for knowing too much about the Kominform.55 García states outright that Cagancho was not involved in those killings, perhaps because another Spaniard had to be murdered in Paris a few days later.56 At the meeting, Cagancho, who had obviously been given the orders to spy on García, tried to prevent García from speaking, but Iglesias allowed him to. That meeting broke up in bedlam, but in the course of the three meetings all those Spanish communists who had been the Party leaders in Mauthausen, with the single unexplained exception of Bonaque, were expelled from the PCE—which, incidentally, still remained in France despite its expulsion by the French Government after the murders in 1950. Razola, Constante, Tarragó, Perlado—all gone, and in the very year of publication of Razola and Constante’s collective work Triangle bleu, which appeared in Paris in French ten years before it appeared in Spanish in Barcelona. Many questions have never been answered. The authors were presumably denied the services of Éditions Sociales, the leading French communist publishing house in Paris, but they obtained instead, for a book worse than mediocre by any standards of writing or scholarship, a most prestigious publisher (Gallimard), which might have been impressed by the PCE’s current upheaval. For a Spanish edition in Paris, the authors would have been dependent on Ruedo ibérico, run by the anarchist José Martínez who would not have welcomed them and who was producing Vilanova’s Los Olvidados in the same year. Since both works include the photographs, the question remains as to how all this was negotiated. García was never contacted by either publisher. The case of Evelyn Le Chêne is simpler: she alone among historians, up to the present work, interviewed Antonio García, and received his permission to publish the photos included in 1971 by Methuen. In her book she thanked him for the photos, but she never wrote to him again, adding to his disillusionment. García finally left the Party—as a Catalan, his was the PSUC—in 1970. He never formally broke with it, nor was he expelled, but by that time his last hopes had evaporated and he had lost his last respect for the Party’s leaders. ‘For 32 years after the Liberation,’ he wrote to Constante, ‘I maintained my silence, at least outside the Party.’57 The public occasion on which he broke it was a reunion (not a formal meeting) of Mauthausen survivors held in Perpignan in 1977 at the Catalan cultural centre, founded by Salvador Figueras. Antonio García and Jacinto Cortés were among those present. García let loose with a denunciation of Boix, who was long since dead, saying that his seizure of the photos was an act of treachery against a comrade of the workplace and of the Party, an act totally controlled and organized

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by others above him.58 Nearly 20 years later, at his home in Perpignan and before the author and Juan de Diego, Cortés reeled off without a pause, and with the mental clarity of a lawyer, the four questions that in his defence of Boix he had put to García: • To whom did you give the photos when you fell sick, in order to guarantee that they would be saved? • Why, at the Liberation, did you not go and pick up the photos? • If the photos were yours, why weren’t you at Nuremberg to testify against the Nazis? • Why do you attack Boix now and not earlier when he was still alive? To all four questions, added Cortés in 1995, in recreating that scene in 1977, García had not a word to say, other than a question: ‘And who are you?’59 On his return to Paris after that 1995 meeting, the author had his last full-length discussion with Antonio García before García’s memory became impaired. On the four questions of Cortés, García had a clear and ready answer for each: • What better place was there to hide the prints than in the lab? The lab had never been searched. Ricken left us alone; his only interest was in making money. Why not leave the photos in their place a few more months? They were safe, safer than they could be anywhere else in the camp. They were dispersed and hidden, but if any were discovered, in a drawer, in a box, in a card index, it could be argued that they had been rejected as of inferior quality. From the point of view of the SS, they were reasonably in their place. Boix’s action was not motivated by any sense of the common good but by self-interest, his desire for personal fame. A comrade does not act like that. • Where would I go to recover the photos? I went to my superior in the Party: Tarragó, who approved what Boix had done. • I did not go to Nuremberg because nobody invited me, either there or to the Dachau trial. I could attend the Cologne trial only because Boix was already dead and because the West German Government covered my expenses. It needed me to testify against Schultz, Ricken’s superior in the Politische Abteilung, and I stayed for six days. Schultz admitted that he knew me and the work I had done for him, but he tried to dismiss every accusation as a piece of hyperbole or malice. • Why did I wait for Boix to die before attacking him? I attacked him from the start, and I have never stopped. But the Party smothered everything I ever said. I told Boix in public that he behaved at Mauthausen like a friend of the SS. And he admitted it, in that way of his. He went on admitting everything I said about him. But he had the Party on his side, and I didn’t. Only one version was allowed.60 In the 1980s García received a visit from Razola. ‘We are the prisoners of what we have said,’ said Razola. ‘We cannot turn all that around overnight. Little by little we will

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try to rectify the historical account.’61 Razola lived until 1993, but he was too much the old Party man, even though he had been ejected, to rectify anything. Constante, similarly ejected by the Party, and similarly unreconstructed, had begun his post-war career less advantaged than Boix or Antonio García. He returned to Paris to work in, and then run, a small grocery shop, and there is no evidence that he ever learnt a trade or entered a profession.62 He did, however, develop a desire to write, and hence made a living and at the same time a reputation, which was far from his liking. In the interview which the author had with him at Orly in 1997, Constante shed some light on matters in dispute, and upon himself, though he was visibly nervous. (We were in company, and he could not easily walk away.) He was very much aware that Antonio García was still alive, giving the impression even that he monitored his movements. When told that the author knew him, Constante’s interest increased, and even more so when told that he had studied their correspondence too. Constante proceeded to explain that he had long ago left the PCE, ‘because of Carrillo’. He later added, ‘because of Prague’. Constante implied that his only enemy was Stalin, who banned him from visiting the Soviet Union, as he was informed through the Amicale, and obtained a visitor’s visa only later, with the advent of Khruschev. The rape of Budapest by Khruschev in 1956 was therefore not a compelling factor in the mind of Constante, though to be fair, there were other members of note in the Spanish Communist Party, not forgetting Fernando Claudín and Jorge Semprún, who had soldiered on even in the face of the Mindszenty trial in Budapest in 1948, the Slansky trial in Prague in 1952, the East Berlin riots in 1953, and finally Budapest in 1956, and took until 1964 to resign. When asked about Semprún, Constante expressed his disgust, ‘both ideological and personal. When Pasionaria and Carrillo returned to France in 1946 and demanded an accounting by members of the PCE, Semprún looked away and said nothing.’63 The crowning moment in Constante’s life would seem to be the scene in the documentary film on Mauthausen produced by the Amicale in which he holds a packet of negatives in an envelope marked Vöcklabruck in Gothic script and offers the viewers one more time the official communist version of how they were saved. Constante is presumably the benefi-ciary of at least a part of the Boix film legacy, since he told the author in their private meeting they were his personal possession. When asked who took the photos, Constante replied ‘Schinlauer’. This is theoretically possible: when Schinlauer left the Hauptlager he might have been sent to a Nebenlager, but Constante at once made it clear that he knew nothing about Mauthausen’s Erkennungsdienst: he had never heard the name of Ricken.64 In discussing the documentary film with Antonio García, the author was told again that no original negatives survive. If Constante in the film exhibits negatives, he added, they are negatives made from an original print, not the negatives from which the original prints were made. The author’s final question to Antonio García was one that Boix might have asked: ‘How could he know what was happening in the Erkennungsdienst when he was absent in the hospital?’ García replied that he could see for himself when he returned to the photo lab that no further photos had been taken. After the war he

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visited Poland and other Eastern European countries. He met the Poles Gralinsky and Lastowka who had worked with him in the Erkennungsdienst and they told him that Boix never developed or printed anything during his absence. The focus of this book has rightly been the Erkennungsdienst, because Paul Ricken who ran it was the eyes of Mauthausen, and the two Spaniards who worked there, García and Boix, in their separate ways, saved the visual record for posterity, with the help of the Poschacher youths, Cortés and Grau, and the cool courage of Anna Pointner. Apart from Pointner, it was, oddly, an all-Spanish affair, and if the Party had not needed to turn history into mythology the enmity that followed could have been avoided. The history of Mauthausen should have been written 50 years ago, so that its antihistory could have been nipped in the bud. Instead its antihistory continues on, its motivation unknown. The final myth to unravel was not written by Constante but by Cortés, and everything about it mystifies. It was discovered by a German student, Martina Schröck, preparing a thesis at the University of Passau on the Spaniards in Mauthausen. In the course of her research in Austria she found a report, written in German by a certain Tilly Spiegel-Marek and dated 18 August 1969. The report recorded the testimony given that day by Jacinto Cortés, who was then living in Angoulême and leading a group of Spanish youth, the children of Mauthausen survivors, on an excursion to Reifnitz-am-Wörthersee near Klagenfurt. The testimony of Cortés concerned the role of Anna Pointner, and included two astonishing elements. The first affirmed that Anna Pointner had given help to the Spanish prisoners from 1942 and had made her home a meeting place for the Poschacherjugend, who called it ‘the headquarters’. She would allow them to listen to her radio, which was small and not of high quality, so they promised that after the Liberation they would present her with a giant-sized replacement. She would talk to Cortés about Austrian history, offer him something to read, and allow him to curl up in an armchair and go to sleep. The second element moves from the comic to the comic-sinister: the Pointner home was also a favourite meeting place of the SS, who were particularly attracted to one of the three daughters of Anna Pointner (‘the beautiful one’). On one occasion the SS found Cortés asleep in the armchair and asked ‘How did that Spaniard get in here?’ Anna Pointner allegedly responded, ‘Well, you know, there’s a lot of young people around here who are tired.’ That, Cortés suggests, was sufficient to satisfy the SS, who did not disturb him.65 Jacinto Cortés is still alive, but ailing in Perpignan, and Juan de Diego, who also lives in Perpignan and to whom the author sent a copy of the two-page report, does not feel that Cortés is well enough to answer questions. Ironically, the report reached the author just after his 1995 interview with Cortés in his home. A few other members of the Poschacherjugend, notably Santísteban and Nates, in Paris, are also still alive, as are Manuel García in Mauthausen village and all three daughters of Anna Pointner: Leopoldine Drexler, Christina Bina and Edeltraud Heimers. To all except Heimers (living in Australia) the author has referred Cortés’ testimony. Understandably, the most scandalized were Drexler and Bina. The Cortés report has created a considerable shock. The only people qualified to testify are Drexler and Bina, the Poschacherjugend, and to some extent Juan de

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Diego. The former Poschacher youths Santísteban and Nates admit first of all that no one in KL-Mauthausen, or even a small unit of it, knew everything that went on. ‘We all worked together, all of us in the small village quarry,’66 says Nates, ‘but we had our different assignments, carrying the rocks across the mainroad, the smaller ones to the mill, the larger ones to the barges, so that we were not always quite together.’ Neither Nates nor Santísteban ever entered a café or a private house, even in the closing days of the war, and scoff at the idea that a Spanish youth would have been invited into an Austrian home: ‘The SS would have allowed that?’ remarks Santísteban in open contempt of Cortés’ testimony. Juan de Diego believes that Cortés has produced a mélange, comprising part that is hard to believe but nevertheless true, and part that is deliberate fabrication. The youths were not always together, and Cortés did indeed enter a café. Since the Poschacher youths were not looked upon as KZ prisoners, he adds, Cortés might indeed have been invited into the Pointners’ home. ‘As for the SS entering the house, the SS would enter any house they felt like entering, and if there was a pretty daughter in the family that would explain itself. [The Führer needed babies.] As a key member of the Resistance, Frau Pointner might have felt safer to invite the SS, if they wanted to visit.’ But de Diego did not know, until the author told him, that Herr Pointner had been arrested and tortured by the Gestapo. Would Frau Pointner conceivably have sat and watched while the SS flirted with her daughters? Drexler and Bina provide the answers that we must accept as final comment. The sisters agree that two Poschacher boys did indeed slip into the house, reaching the garden through a track in the woods behind, but these were the two youngest, and the sisters remember them as Josef and Felix; they were undoubtedly José Alcubierre Pérez and Félix Quesada Herrerias. This leaves Cortés entirely out of this part of the story. The two boys slipped in for food that Frau Pointner had prepared for them, but all she could provide, given the extreme rationing in force, was home-grown vegetables or a soup. They had to eat and leave instantly: ‘There were Nazis everywhere in the immediate vicinity, and our mother was under permanent surveillance. As a socialist, she had been imprisoned in 1934 by the Dollfuss regime, and had been arrested even before Dollfuss came to power.’ The house, the sisters add emphatically, was never a meeting-place for the Spaniards, even after the Liberation. As for Cortés learning from Frau Pointner about Austrian history, listening to her radio, reading and curling up in the armchair, ‘all this is pure balderdash: Cortés was never in the house!’ None of the Spanish boys ever listened to the Pointners’ wireless. ‘My mother was much too cautious to make a mistake like that,’ says Frau Drexler. ‘She would tune in to the BBC at 2 a.m., but the wireless was indeed of poor quality, and it was impossible for her to receive the BBC programmes in French and Spanish.’ As for the gift of a better wireless after the Liberation, that too is an invention; what the Spaniards brought the family was some luxury food intended for the SS which had been plundered from a train and a boat by the village inhabitants. The allusion by Cortés to the reading-matter given to him by Frau Pointner was treated by the daughters with open contempt: ‘What should our mother have given him? The Völkischer Beobachter?’

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The comic-sinister element in Cortés’ testimony where he spoke of the Pointners’ home as a rendezvous for the SS evoked fury in the two daughters, who cannot understand why Cortés would want to slander their family. ‘The SS would certainly drop by the house,’ says Frau Drexler. ‘We were suspected. They had tortured my father, but that hadn’t closed the case. They would come in with dogs, saying that the dogs needed water. The dogs would sniff around, presumably for anybody hidden in the house. But on social terms, the answer is never. Neither I nor my sisters had any contact whatever with an SS. Nor is it possible that the SS visited the house socially when I wasn’t there. In the evening my sisters and I were always there, and in the daytime, if I was out, I would have been told.’ Cortés himself did not enter their home until after the war was ended, when he visited the Pointners several times in a small group of young Spaniards which included his surviving brother Manuel, Jesús Grau, Miguel Gutiérrez, and the two whom the daughters knew as Josef and Felix. Both the surviving daughters remember Jacinto Cortés as strange and very quiet: ‘He would always sit on the sofa and say nothing.’ They also found it strange that he never attended any of the Befreiungsfeier, or freedom celebrations.67 How, finally, can the purpose of Cortés’ report, so carefully prepared, be explained? Nates tells us that Cortés was in the group closely tied to the communists. Juan de Diego, always in the juste milieu in his political judgement, recognizes Cortés as a man capable of building on to a groundwork of fact a whole tier of artful invention. No less a dedicated Stalinist than Boix or Constante, very much aware that the Pointners were socialists and not communists, what better service could Cortés render the Party than to diminish the reputation of Anna Pointner and extol the role of the communists in the Poschacher youth?

Notes

In the Notes, when more than one source is cited in the reference, the order in which the sources appear corresponds to the chronological order of their publication, with primary sources nevertheless taking precedence. Preface 1 At the Nuremberg Tribunal, Alfred Jodl, Hitler’s chief of operations, made the comment, with reference to the Anschluss: ‘I proposed that our military forces be headed by bands. Make all the drivers wear glasses, for otherwise their eyes will be torn by the flowers thrown at them! And everything went off as planned. It was a march of glory as is rarely seen in history, even if people today don’t like to remember it’ (Varaut, 84). 2 Antonio García to Mariano Constante, Paris, 21 Oct. 1977. 3 Vanguardia, 21 Jan. 1976. 4 Hispania, 54, 2nd series (Apr.–May 1976). 5 Pike, Service, 238–9. 6 Maršálek, Geschichte, 356; Borrás [Lluch], 381. 7 Bargueño and Hernández, 140. 8 Catalá, 93. 9 Levy, 65. 10 Alfaya, 118. 11 Laffitte, Pain, 57. 12 Bunting, 211, caption to photograph 230–1. 13 The Frenchman Georges Angeli was a professional photographer with 14 years of experience when he arrived in Buchenwald in June 1943 and was immediately assigned to the camp’s Erkennungsdienst, or photo-identification service. There he worked, until the destruction of the unit by Allied bombing on 24 Aug. 1944, under an SS who was not a professional and whose name he never learned. The Kommando Kapo, on the other hand, he remembers clearly: Edo Leitner, nicknamed Pepe, was a German poet who was greatly admired, and when denounced by a fellow prisoner and sent to Buchenwald’s prison, he found the inner strength to write poetry. Angeli’s moment of fame came in June 1944 when he took advantage of his post in the photo lab to select a tiny camera from a box of old discarded models and helped himself to two rolls of 6×9 film. Sunday provided the only chance. There were no SS in the camp when he took his photographs, but the informers were as always alert, so that each of

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 293

the 12 photographs he took required the greatest caution. In the circumstances—the prisoners were at rest—none of his photos could be dramatic in content, but one of them shows the famous oak of Goethe in front of the kitchen Block before both were destroyed in the Allied air-raid of 24 Aug. 1944. Angeli also made an extra copy, in the same way that Antonio García did in Mauthausen, of SS photos which he selected and hid under the floorboards of his Block, but the total collection, on view in the Association in Paris, amounts only to a dozen of the one and a dozen of the other. Photographs taken by the SS and secretly copied by prisoner-assistants are scant in the extreme, and photographs purportedly taken by prisoners are even rarer and require the closest scrutiny. Pappalettera (Passerai, 296) writes that some photos were taken secretly at Melk by the Swiss prisoner Kurt Zalud, but it is significant that Pappalettera provides no further details. 14 Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 80.

PART I: THE SS ARCHIPELAGO * There is just one road to Freedom: Its milestones read: Obedience, Diligence, Order, Cleanliness, Honesty, Sacrifice, and Love of the Fatherland. SS advice to every Zugang.

1 Captives in the Channel Islands 1 ‘Rapport général sur les activités des Républicains espagnols dans la libération de la France et dans la lutte contre l’armée d’occupation’, Amicale des Anciens FFI et Résistants espagnols, Conseil national, 2; Gordon, 437; Weill, 112–13, who cites the report of Maurice Dubois, of the Secours Suisse aux Enfants, according to which the number of those detained in Argelès on 20 Nov. 1940 amounted to 15 500, including 13 000 Spaniards and 1300 International Brigaders, but excluding the 3000 Spaniards who arrived from Bram. The figures provided by Rubio, Guerra civil, 319–20, 334, differ starkly from those of Dr Weill. According to Rubio, whose source is Dr Cramer’s report to the International Red Cross, there were no more than 3024 Spaniards in Argelès in Nov. 1940, and only 4651 Spaniards interned in the whole of France. Rubio (ibid. 320) refers to a ‘probable error’ in Dr Cramer’s report in respect to Argelès, which he corrects without explaining the substance of the error. 2 Rubio, ibid. 924. The GTE in 1941 numbered 60 000, of whom 20 000 were Jews and most of the rest were Spanish (Marrus and Paxton, 171). 3 Vilanova, 199. They included some Spaniards taken prisoner in the Compagnies de travailleurs. 4 Stein, 125–6. Stein adds that the Spaniards were in possession of German safeconduct passes as they left Perpignan. 5 A few inhabitants defiantly remained, notably Frank Oselton, at Watermill Farm near Fort Tourgis, who let his wife and children leave with the rest on 23 June; and George Pope (Bonnard, 124, 143; Cruickshank, 195). Mention should be made of the Falla

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6

7 8 9

10

11 12 13

14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21

22

family, descended from a house of Jewish nobility which had fled from Spain in 1487 and settled in Guernsey. Francis (Frank) Falla was a leader of the Guernsey Underground News Service, a resistance group that went by its acronym GUNS and disseminated news from England; denounced, he was arrested on 6 Apr. 1944 and deported to a camp in Germany, but he survived. Another member of the family, Raymond Falla, represented Guernsey on a three-man consulting committee, headed by a German official and including a representative from Jersey, which was autho rized to visit the mainland to obtain food supplies; he was often successful (Steckoll, 91, 124; Cruickshank, 123, 151; Ruaux, 15). The edict, signed by Hitler personally on 20 Oct. 1941, included clause 3 (e): ‘Foreign labour, especially Russian and Spanish but also French, may be used for building operations’ (Packe and Dreyfus, 37–9). Cruickshank, 194, 203, 205. Bunting, 157–8, 220. The Spanish prisoner Cristóbal López Rubio and others escaped from Lager Himmelman and were sheltered to the end of the war by the local Le Cornu family; López married their daughter Alice, who was pregnant at 15 (Bunting, 220). Dalmau, 7–13; Cruickshank, 201, 205; Wood, 124; Soriano, 35. Dalmau tells us that his killing of Schultz was an act of personal revenge. He was very fortunate in Alderney in being assigned to harbour maintenance (from July 1943 to Aug. 1944), thus avoiding the work that killed (Packe and Dreyfus, 57). Cruickshank, 195. The great majority of Wehrmacht forces in Alderney were army and Luftwaffe, but the Kriegsmarine’s personnel more than doubled in this period (Cruickshank, 194). Packe and Dreyfus, 59; Cruickshank, 203; Steckoll, 79; Ruaux, 172, 181, 272; ‘Les Îles Anglo-Normandes’, video-cassette. Packe and Dreyfus (60) refer to the existence of a fifth camp, named Citadella, which has not been identified by any other source. It was probably the name given to the prison. They are known only as Boer, Massmann, Paulsen, and Rebs. Dalmau, 16; Bonnard, vii, 28, 50. On his return to the USSR in 1945, Kondakov was branded a traitor and spent four-and-a-half years in the Gulag, in Pechora. Rohde handed over the command in Feb. 1942 to Major Zuske, and he, in Nov. 1943, to Oberstleutnant Schwalm (Packe and Dreyfus, 42, based on information received from Major Theodore Pantcheff). ‘Bunny’ Pantcheff, of the British Intelligence Corps, was sent to Alderney in May 1945 to investigate German conduct during the Occupation. Certain testimony given at the trial of Adler and Evers concerning the German command structure is at variance with Pantcheff’s account, and on such points the trial testimony should be disregarded. Surviving prisoners often gave, unwittingly, inaccurate information. Bonnard, 67; Cruickshank, 203. Packe and Dreyfus, 55, based on private information from Pantcheff. Dr Yvan Dreyfus, Procès Evers-Adler, 46. Nebel, 186. Trat, interview. These were: B.Cardona Torrandell of Barcelona, Julio Comín of Rivesaltes, and Isidore Cueva of Chaumont. Comín has since died. The other two do not respond to inquiries. Trat, interview; Procès Evers-Adler, 6. The Soviets were the second group to enter. Another convoy of Spaniards arrived on 22 Feb. 1942, and the Jews from Drancy on

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 295

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

32 33

34

35

12 Aug. 1943. There were 1500 prisoners in the camp in May 1944 when orders were given to begin the evacuation in preparation for the expected Allied invasion. The evacuation was completed on 25 June (Iselin, 59). At the trial of Adler and Evers, this classification baffled the court, but it was understood to mean Zivilkazettier (Procès Evers-Adler, 16). Ibid. Procès Evers-Adler, 5, 31, 46. Ibid. 5, 13, 17, 36, 74, 75. Bonnard, 66. In his examination of the causes of death, as recorded by the Germans, Cruick shank, 205, lists: heart failure from exhaustion, cachexia, dysentery, and tuberculosis. Procès Evers-Adler, 24, 28. Ibid. 42–3. Testimony of Léon Kartun, at Evers’ trial (Procès Evers-Adler, 39). A slightly different version is provided by Francisco Font (in Steckoll, 89). Kartun was a concert pianist whose talent meant nothing to the SS. They assigned him to manual labour in which he did what he could to protect his hands, at the risk of alienating his comrades who accused him of malingering. He managed to build a soundless instrument on which to practise, and after the Liberation performed in Paris at the Salle Pleyel (Trat, interview). Trat, interview; Procès Evers-Adler, 31, 38, 45, 49, 77. Angel [Sanz], Guerrilleros, 51. During the Civil War, Acero had been the name of the journal of Líster’s Vth Army Corps of Modesto’s Army of the Ebro. Ruaux refers (197, 201) to the attempts of Spanish communists in Jersey to organize resistance, but gives no details. Two prisoners nevertheless succeeded, even from Alderney, in escaping to England on 18 Apr. 1944 in a fishing boat. Their account of the prison island fell on deaf ears, since Allied attention was absorbed in the preparations for the Normandy invasion (Packe and Dreyfus, 62). On the other hand, their report on the strength of the German fortifications might well have persuaded the Allied leaders to bypass the liberation of the Islands until the very end of the war. Dalmau, 24; Pantcheff, passim; Steckoll, 26, 84–9; Soriano, 35.

2 Deported to the Stalags 1 Vilanova (147, 198) gives the figure of 46 000, broken down as follows: Captured in 1940 in the French Compagnies de travailleurs, Bataillons de marche, and French Foreign Legion, 30 000; Forced or voluntary workers, 15 000; Arrested Resistance members and captured guerrilleros, 1000. Rolland, Vichy, 144, gives a total of 40 000. 2 Vilanova, 147. Vilanova tends to inflate his figures. 3 Diego, audio-recorded by Madelyn Most, Perpignan, 1994. 4 A latrine bucket was placed in the corner of each wagon. The prisoners naturally did their best to stay as far from it as possible, because as it filled, and the train jolted, the contents spilled over the floor (Constante, interview). 5 Diego, interviews; Cinca, 14–51, passim.

296 NOTES TO PP. XVI–3

3 The Spaniards and the KZ universe 1 Vilanova, 198; Stein, 242. Stein gives the figure of 10 350 Spaniards entering Mauthausen from a single camp (Stalag XI-B, at Fallingbostel, north of Hanover) during the period from 6 Aug. 1940 to 20 Dec. 1941, using the official German record which, Stein adds, contains gaps. These figures, however, are disputed by Juan de Diego, whose lower figures (7288 for the entire period from 6 Aug. 1940 to 16 Apr. 1945) are given in Fabréguet, ‘Groupe’, 35. Cf. Borrás [Lluch], 89, 363–7. The diversity of the Stalags to which the Spaniards were sent is shown in the experience of some of the leading figures in this book. Antonio García, for example, was sent to Stalag XVII-A at Kaisersteinbruch, almost on the Hungarian frontier, and Antonio Velasco to Stalag II-A at Neubrandenburg, due north of Berlin. 2 Cf. Pike, Jours, 13 n.; and Fabréguet (‘Groupe’, 34–5) who points out that over 1000 Spaniards had arrived in Mauthausen even before Serrano Súñer arrived in Berlin. Serrano’s visit to Berlin on 15–25 Sep. 1940 was memorable for more than his talks with the Nazi leaders. A group of Spanish Republicans then in Berlin were assembled in the Olympic Stadium, where they were inspected by Serrano and his SS hosts and ordered to give the Nazi salute. An eye-witness, Enrique Ruiz, has described the scene. (Ruiz was only 16-years-old when he served in the Civil War as lieutenant escort to General Vicente Rojo, the Republican chief of staff, and he was only 17 when he witnessed Serrano’s visit to Berlin.) The Republicans remonstrated, whereupon Serrano lunged at them with his baton, drawing blood from Ruiz’s nose, and all the while calling them ‘Red cowards’ (Hispania, 66, 2nd series (Feb. 1980)). 3 Témoins, 121; Pendaries, 55–64. 4 The Austrian name for Germany, once Austria was annexed, was Altreich. 5 Vilanova, 200–1; Climent Sarrión, (Hispania, 54, 2nd series Apr.–May 1976). Cf. J.Bailina (Hispania, 42, 2nd series (July 1972)) whose figures are close to those of Climent. 6 Vilanova, 199. 7 Borrás [Lluch], 185. Borrás, no less than Diego and Razola, was an inmate of Mauthausen, entering the camp on 23 July 1941 at the age of 24 (ibid. 127). He was transferred to Steyr, where he served as an interpreter from German into Spanish and French. 8 Including 3839 in Gusen and 449 in Schloss Hartheim (Tillion, 384). 9 Including 4200 in Gusen. In their 1979 Spanish edition, which is merely a translation from the French except for the addition of two appendices (193–330) listing the dead, the authors scale down their estimate to a total of 4074. 10 The Mauthausen Museum provides a breakdown by age group of each of the national groups of prisoners. While figures for 31 Mar. 1943 are presented for other national groups, no figure is available for the Spanish group, and no explanation is given as to why it was not compiled in that year. The last roll-call, on 3 May 1945, gives the figure of 2182 Spaniards. The breakdown by age group for the Spanish survivors during the last two years reads as follows: 11 Borrás [Lluch], 185, 366, provides the following breakdown, based certainly on the records of Climent.

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 297

12 Through some administrative error, 17 non-Jewish Spaniards were transferred from Dachau and Majdanek to Auschwitz. One of them, José Guerrero Pérez, survived (Vilanova, 98, 176). Still alive and well in Paris in 1992, he refuses to speak of the past (interview). 13 Kogon, 379; Rubio, Guerra civil, 406 n. The testimony of Eugen Kogon is one of the most valuable we have, on account of the character of the author and the position he held. Kogon was an Austrian monarchist and liberal Catholic whose public hostility to Nazism placed him on the Nazis’ first black list. Arrested in Vienna on 12 Mar. 1938, he remained a prisoner of the SS for seven years. At Buchenwald he was made secretary to the SS doctor in charge of Block 50 and saw many confidential documents. His account reveals him as neither a communist nor an anti-communist, but at Buchenwald he noted the ‘parallel hierarchy’ established by the KPD. 14 Rovan, 68. 15 Alfaya, 102. 16 Vilanova, 98. 17 The astonishing figures given above by the survivor John Dalmau are omitted from this tableau, because no figures at all for Alderney appear anywhere else. Even the detailed account by Pantcheff virtually ignores the presence of Spaniards on the island. 18 The equally astonishing figures given by the survivor Largo Caballero to Pasionaria: ‘5000 Spaniards interned, of whom 500 survived’ (Ibarruri, Memorias, 611), are also omitted for lack of corroboration. 19 Vilanova, 200–1. No one else has produced an estimate of Spanish fatalities in SS camps other than Mauthausen, but it seems, in the light of the above, that the total is considerably higher. 20 Ibid. 201. 21 Jean Laffitte, a survivor of Ebensee, writes that up until the last few weeks, when a large number of Spaniards were evacuated to that camp, Ebensee had fewer than 150

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22 23 24 25 26 27

Spaniards (Ceux, 269, 323). Francisco Bernal, who was also there, from its opening in 1943, affirms that the Spaniards were in the majority, and as such they sought the control that the Poles had taken at Gusen I (interview). An official report after the Liberation (compiled on 17 May 1945) shows 240 Spaniards still alive at Ebensee (Le Chêne, 241). Vilanova, 98. Rafael Álvarez, who was assigned first to Gusen II and then to Vöcklabruck (interview). Rubio, Guerra civil, 406. Vilanova, 98. Razola and Constante, 76. Vilanova, 196. Ibid. 200–1; Rubio, Guerra civil, 410.

4 Classification and stratification 1 Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 41; Vilanova, 96–7. The latter claims that Himmler took this decision earlier, on 28 Aug. 1940. 2 Le Chêne, 64. 3 Busson, 176. Marie-Jo Chombart de Lauwe, who also survived both camps, emphatically disagrees (interview). There is a place in this comparison for wide differences in individual experience. 4 This list is by no means complete. 5 Vilanova, 182. 6 Ibid. 184. 7 Maršálek, Geschichte, 352. 8 So called from the pronunciation in German of KZ, one of the two abbreviations of Konzentrationslager; hence, a concentration camp inmate. 9 Tillard (Mauthausen, 30) tells us, from his own experience in Mauthausen, that black triangles were never made Block leaders, since the job required an ability to speak, write, and count, and they lacked it. 10 Vilanova, 135; Le Chêne, 40–1; Alfaya, 107. 11 The prisoners were not entrusted with razors, and did not have the right to shave themselves. They would be shaved everyday, but the work was very quick. On Saturdays and Sundays they would be shaved of all of their body hair (García Barrado, interview). 12 This category included supporters of Ernst Röhm as well as Germans taken prisoner while serving in the French Foreign Legion and sentenced as traitors to Germany. 13 A green triangle pointing in the opposite direction (upwards) indicated that the holder was given to uncontrollably violent behaviour; in most cases he had been released from a mental institution to which he had been confined for murder, incest, or rape. 14 Mauthausen had only 40 (Tillard, Mauthausen, 30). 15 While the majority of these were German Jehovah’s Witnesses, any German refusing to serve Hitler on the basis of religious beliefs could be given the purple triangle. Catholic priests were referred to by the SS as Kanzeljuden (‘pulpit Jews’), and monks as Kuttenscheisse (‘cowl shit’).

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 299

16 The yellow triangle, pointing upwards, was placed under a second triangle, pointing downwards, forming a Star of David. The second triangle could be red, green, or black, depending on the prisoner’s status. 17 This category included not only idlers, loners, vagabonds and poachers but also anyone who had refused the work or workplace assigned to him or her and even anyone who had arrived late for work. 18 Pappalettera, Parola, 221. Schweiger became the only inmate of the saddleries, which provided the SS with their riding material but also with their whips and nooses. 19 Cf. Borrás [Lluch], 264, for a table of the 160 Spaniards who attained these posts. Among the rarer forms of employment was that given at Buchenwald to three German communists, who were appointed by two SS officers, who were doctoral candidates, to write the officers’ dissertations (Kühn and Weber, 78). 20 Pappalettera, Parola, 41–2. Even survivors from the same camp can fundamentally contradict one another in their testimony. Jean Laffitte (Ceux, 242–3) presents an inmate hierarchy in which the Prominenten are the most privileged class. Juan de Diego and Lázaro Nates, on the other hand, point out that, where privilege is concerned, the only one that any prisoner really cared about was eating more. The Prominenten ate a little better than the mass, but not all that much better, while the Kapos ate well (interviews). 21 García Alonso, interview. This remarkable luxury, when compared with the living conditions of the mass, has been omitted from virtually all published accounts. The omission is easily understandable, and forgivable.

5 Opposing programmes: extenuation versus extermination 1 Glücks, headquartered at Oranienburg, thereafter answered both to Pohl and to Heydrich (and to his successor Kaltenbrunner). 2 The terms Nebenlager, Aussenlager, Aussenkommando, and even (in the case of Gusen) Unterkunft, are used interchangeably, since the political and economic branches of the SS themselves used different terms for the same camp. Nebenlager was the most common term in use, however distant the subsidiary may have been from the mother camp. The term Aussenkommando was used for a subsidiary of a subsidiary; if it became permanent, it could become a Nebenlager. The terms given to the commandants of these camps (Lagerkommandant, Lagerführer, Lagerleiter) are equally interchangeable. 3 Favez, 363. 4 Nibelungenwerke at St Valentin consisted of some 30 assembly workshops. They produced the slow but mighty Tiger tank (56 tons), in service from Nov. 1942, and the superfast Panther (30 tons), in service from mid-1943. As elsewhere, the prisoners worked in two shifts, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. or from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. (Bernadac, Jours, 285; Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 560). 5 Pappalettera, Parola, 31, 38; Iselin, 77–8; Borrás [Lluch], 169–70. The number of subsidiary camps attached to Mauthausen is commonly given in official documents and Austrian textbooks as 49. The Mauthausen Museum lists the total at 61. Even the total of 91 Mauthausen Nebenlager compiled by Borrás (263) is not complete; cf. Iselin’s list and the International Tracing Service, Catalogue. Since some subsidiary

300 NOTES TO PP. XVI–3

camps had subsidiaries of their own, and since some were set up only for a temporary purpose, no definitive figure is possible. The camp at St Ägyd, for example, set up in the mountains south of Amstetten, was nothing like a camp: it consisted of a few mechanics who repaired motor-cycles or worked on technical experiments. Similarly, a camp in Amstetten itself was set up only when the train station had to be repaired after a heavy air-raid. Again, Gunskirchen in 1945 was not one camp but three. 6 Pappalettera, Parola, 143. 7 Krüger was employed at Mauthausen first as a sentry and later in the Politische Abteilung. 8 The order, carrying the signatures of Pohl, SS-Obergruppenführer, and Glücks, SSBrigadeführer, called for the following five rewards:

1 An increase in correspondence rights, at the discretion of the individual Lagerführer, from two to up to four letters or cards per month, incoming and outgoing. German prisoners, but Germans only, can modify their haircut, provided that it is short and military. 2 Extra rations. 3 Monetary awards (in coupons) of 2–4 RM per day, or more, to an absolute maximum of 10 RM, to be used for buying cigarettes or entering the brothel. 4 Tobacco allowance. 5 For the very best workers, access to the brothel once a week, payable by a 2 RM coupon. The prostitute is to earn 0.45 RM and the woman-surveyor 0.05 RM per customer. (Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 1072). 9 The name ‘Nacht und Nebel’ was coined by Hitler himself (Tillion, 473; cf. Pike. Service, 314). At Keitel’s trial in Nuremberg, his counsel, Dr Otto Nelte, argued that his client did not deny that the ‘Nacht und Nebel’ decree was contrary to international law, or that he knew it to be so. ‘But what he denies,’ added Nelte, ‘is that he ever knew that NN prisoners would remain in police hands after their arrival in Germany and that they would be sent to concentration camps.’ Found guilty on all four of the Tribunal’s counts, Keitel was hanged. 10 Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 56; Pappalettera, Parola, 28–33, 79. Goering and Kaltenbrunner attested to this at the Nuremberg Tribunal (Borrás [Lluch], 175).

6 Everyday life in the KZ 1 Debrise, 35. 2 Diego, interview; Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’ 905–6. At the barbers, nothing was wasted. Vilanova (119) refers to seven tons of women’s hair used by the Raeski firm to make carpets and slippers for U-boat crews. 3 Antonio Velasco, Hispania, 4° época, no. 14, Dec. 1993–Jan. 1994, 14. 4 Aldebert, 22; Delfieu, 68, 103; Iselin, 95–6. 5 Mauthausen, 17. 6 Vilanova, 116, 144.

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 301

7 The poster displayed in every Block: ‘Eine Laus dein Tod!’ (‘One louse spells your death!’) was not the usual hate-filled type of SS warning, but reflected instead the terror of the SS of being contaminated by plague or other epidemic. The Lauskontrolle was held in the evenings, several times a month. 8 Debrise, 48; Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 59. 9 Luis García Manzano, in Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 413–14. 10 Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 59. 11 Diego, interview. The lights could not be seen beyond 500 metres, nor above a height of 100 metres (Horwitz, 15–16). 12 The later times are given by Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 911. 13 Pappalettera, Parola, 122, 127. 14 Tillard, Mauthausen, 43, 61. Laffitte (Pendaison, 91) recounts a more modest feat by the Spanish shoemaker Francisco Bernal who drank three litres of soup, which made him sick, but he still drank another three. 15 Ghigi,40. 16 Le Caër, Cicatrices, 19. 17 Maršálek, ‘Mauthausen’, 30; Cinca, 117; Razola and Constante, 41–2; Vilanova, 141– 2. 18 Aldebert, 56. 19 The term ‘Revier’, which means only a dispensary, remained in general use when this unit, which at Mauthausen changed its location more than once, grew into a hospital and then into a hospital camp. As a hospital camp, it was originally called the Russenlager, since it was built by the Soviet prisoners in 1942–3, outside the fortress and down the hill. It was also known as the Krankenlager, but its official name was the Sanitätslager. Those prisoners entering it retained their KL-M number but had SL prefixed to it. 20 Pappalettera, Parola, 25. 21 Maršálek, Geschichte, 352. 22 Mauthausen being different from the norm, prisoners there had the right to rest only every other Sunday, except at Ebensee, where there was no rest at all (Laffitte, Ceux, 256). On the other hand, once the decision was taken to reduce the death rate, those working in Mauthausen’s quarry were excused work from Saturday afternoon to Monday morning. The purpose, writes the survivor Paul Tillard (Mauthausen, 51), was only to prolong the agony, to prevent any prisoner from dying too fast. 23 Maršálek, ‘Mauthausen’, 18. Even in hanging, the SS worked out some refinements. At KL-Buchenwald and elsewhere, victims were hanged from the mouth instead of the throat in order to prolong the agony. Again, at KL-Flossenbürg and elsewhere, those waiting to be hanged were gagged up to the last moment to deprive them of the chance to call out last appeals for courage and defiance. Antonio García recalls that, at the hangings he witnessed at Mauthausen, the cord was placed just behind the ears, resulting in dislocation of the neck. This did not prolong the victim’s agony but it produced a nervous spasm: the body continued to writhe for two or three minutes after the victim was dead. 24 Santísteban, interview. 25 Ramón Bargueño (interview) proves an exception to the rule that the prisoner was marked for life. He almost makes light of the 25 lashes he received at Steyr, insisting that the essential things were not to lose count and to soak the body afterwards in water, which he was able to do. The marks, he said, had disappeared within a week or

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27 28 29

30 31

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34 35 36

two, but he admits that in his case the lashes were administered by a single SS and not by a team. This should still be considered, if not a unique case, a most unusual one. Diego, interview; Álvarez and Santísteban, interview. All three were eyewitnesses. Diego insists that, among all the Spaniards whipped, he never heard one cry out in pain. Riquet, interview. Wiesenthal, interview. Vilanova, 101, 139–40. Maršálek (Geschichte, 356) considers that the SS were the first to adopt it, as an alternative to their other terms, Kretiner and Schwimmer. The term derives from the bodily movements of these prisoners, especially in the use of their hands and the forward fall of their bodies, reminiscent of a Muslim at prayer. The posture is closer to that of the poor derelict in the ballet Till Eulenspiegel of Richard Strauss and Nijinski: legs and feet turned inward, head dropping and leaning to the side. Diego, interview. Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 68, 79. The renowned psychologist Bruno Bettelheim reached the same conclusion. After studying in Vienna under Freud, he spent nearly two years in KL-Dachau and KL-Buchenwald before his release in 1939. He emigrated to the United States and gained early fame for his study of prisoners in SS camps. In his essay ‘Surviving’, published in The New Yorker in 1976, he wrote that those who survived were those who lived not for life’s sake but for some cultural ideal that transcended them. Roig, ‘Generación’, 36. Razola and Constante, 65. Whoever was unattached, or had no family left, may well have held an advantage. ‘If a man broke down and cried for his family, as some men did, he was doomed. We said he had ten days left to live’ (Dobiáš, interview). Diego, interview with Madelyn Most. Diego adds: ‘I was only rarely struck, but I never fell.’ Gouffault, 42. Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved (New York: Summit, 1987).

7 Oranienburg, Buchenwald and Mauthausen compared 1 Gaucher, 3. 2 Arrested at 19 years of age by the Gestapo near Auxerre, when he operated under the name of Gérard, Semprún had been sent to the sorting centre at Compiègne and had then undergone the 5-day nightmare journey, with 120 to a cattle-car, in the train to Buchenwald. For his poem, written at Buchenwald on 17 Feb. 1945 and entitled ‘Le rêve ancien’, see Pouzol, 109–10. Cf. Semprún, 119. Semprún received no special protection at Buchenwald (Rousset, interview), but he was the only Spaniard there who spoke German, which qualified him as a Prominenter. Semprún does not speak of his personal experience. 3 The famous oak did not survive the war. It was destroyed in an Allied air attack in Aug. 1944 (Semprún, interview). 4 Hénoque, 46–8.

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 303

5 Among them, its two-storey Blocks, hence divided into four Stuben, from A to D, with 500 prisoners in each. 6 Vilanova, 131. 7 Ibid. 105–6. Juan de Diego (interview) denies this: ‘The lights were not kept on all night.’ The truth, apparently, is that some were, but were not visible to aircraft (see above, p. 321, n. 11). 8 Mauthausen is technically a Marktgemeinde, between a Dorf (village) and a Stadt (town). Its railway station serves only a north-south route, linking Pregarten with St Valentin. 9 In the preparation of his doctorat d’état dissertation, the French historian Michel Fabréguet was refused access to Messerschmitt’s files on the Second World War (Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 18). 10 Boüard (Mauthausen’, 40) contends that this action was taken ‘at the beginning of 1938,’ presumably before the Anschluss. This is not possible. 11 Maršálek, ‘Mauthausen’, 32; Alfaya, 104. 12 Vilanova, 133. So intemperate is Mauthausen in mid-winter that the fortress is closed to visitors for several weeks. 13 Inmate number 1 was a Jewish doctor who had served as a surgeon in the International Brigades in Spain; he died on the barbed wire (Macdonald, 299). 14 Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 41. The Mauthausen Museum provides the following statistics concerning the total number of prisoners in the Mauthausen complex at three specific dates: 15 Alfaya, 102. 16 Pappalettera, Parola, 38. 17 Alfaya (102) estimates the number of K prisoners at 25 000. 18 Maršálek, ‘Mauthausen’, 1. 19 Vilanova, 108; he suggests that all these were registered, which is surely untrue. Vilanova (116) subsequently adds 30000 who were executed without being registered. 20 Pappalettera, Parola, 39. Cf. Borrás [Lluch], 183–4, and the figure of 122 767 on the monument in Mauthausen (see below, p. 384), which suggests an error of transcription, presumably on the part of Pappalettera. 21 Maršálek, Geschichte, 50. 22 Cf. Vilanova, 121. 23 Maršálek, Geschichte, 130, reproducing an official WVHA chart. Only Buchenwald and Gross-Rosen had more, and only because of the large number of women in these two camps.

304 NOTES TO PP. XVI–3

24 Pappalettera, Parola, 38, citing SS documents. The figures given by Vilanova (121) and Razola and Constante (149) are inaccurate guesses. 25 Pappalettera, Parola, 38. 26 Dobiáš, interview. 27 Diego, interview; Pappalettera, Parola, 50. 28 Le Chêne, 172. The Totenkopfverbände was that part of the Allgemeine-SS which was consigned to guarding the concentration camps, and is not to be confused with the 3rd SS-Panzerdivision (‘Totenkopf’) which was Waffen-SS but which was initially composed of three regiments that were taken from the Totenkopfverbände to form its infantry. Later, on 22 Apr. 1941, the SS-Führungshauptamt incorporated all units of the Totenkopfverbände, hence every SS camp garrison, into the Waffen-SS. Himmler’s action of that date thus deprives every veteran of the Waffen-SS of the right to claim that the Waffen-SS were military units unconnected with the administration of the concentration camps (Andreas Ruppert, private correspondence).

8 The survival of the evidence 1 For a review of the literature on Mauthausen, see Pike, Service, 76–8. David Rousset, a survivor of Buchenwald and other camps, rebukes the many authors who have amalgamated their information to the point that those interviewed see their own testimony submerged in a sea of extraneous data, true or false (interview). 2 Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 74, 80. 3 Razola and Constante, 161. 4 Cf. Vilanova, 85, 197. 5 Ibid. 215. Vilanova (197) refers to Casimir Climent and Manuel Razola as the two Spaniards holding the key positions in the camp, without mentioning Juan de Diego. Vilanova interviewed the first two but not the third. Razola, however, is not in the same class as the other two: although he was a leader of the resistance organization and is an important witness to that, he was not employed as the others were in the camp archives. 6 Le Chêne (153) writes that they even had to wear SS uniform. Juan de Diego (interview) emphatically disagrees. 7 Vilanova, 215; Pons, Republicanos, 42. 8 Vilanova, 197, 215–16. 9 At least another 50 Spaniards died between 2 May and the liberation of the camp a few days later. Juan de Diego, keeping his own secret record while working in the Lagerschreibstube, produced a total of 4854. 10 Ferencz, 53; Gilbert, 357–8. Ferencz is now Senior Special Fellow at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, and a professor of international law at Pace University, New York. 11 Diego, interview. 12 Le Chêne (109–10) who interviewed Climent, writes that he managed to hide no less than 14 kg of prisoners’ files behind a cabinet placed there to conceal a former window in the wall. Since there are three separate surviving collections involved here, it seems

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 305

13

14 15

16

that Le Chêne has confused Climent’s testimony: the largest of the three collections, weighing the 14 kg to which she refers, was in fact hidden in the boxes. The copies were distributed to the International Red Cross, the Ministère des Anciens combattants et victimes de guerre in Paris, the Asociación de Deportados Españoles Antifascistas (which later became the Amicale de Mauthausen) also in Paris, and the leaders of the five Spanish political parties or labour unions represented in Mauthausen (Vilanova, 216; Rubio, Guerra civil, 410 n.). Diego to Herr Ohren, Magistrates’ Court, Cologne: Luchon, 21 Dec. 1962. Michael S.Bernstein, Office of Special Investigations, US Department of Justice, Washington, DC, to Juan de Diego Herranz: 23 June 1987. Bernstein was killed in the Lockerbie air disaster on 21 Dec. 1988. He had been in Vienna at Austrian insistence to sign an agreement which could just as well have been signed in Washington (Alice E.Kennington, Office of Special Investigations, Criminal Division, US Department of Justice, Washington, DC, letter of 1 Feb. 1996). Etienne and Paul Le Caër (139) propose, without presenting a shred of evidence, that the passengers on this flight included FBI and CIA agents whose investigations in Germany had alarmed former Nazi war criminals who thus took defensive action. Kogon, 322.

PART II: MAUTHAUSEN, CATEGORY THREE * Whether day or night, At all times alert. The bell rings out the summons. A signal beckons, Your duty starts. SS caveat posted in the Appellplatz at Gusen.

1 The arrival 1 2 3 4

Now the Gasthaus Fam. Neuhofer. Now the Eduard Kaisers Gasthaus, Fam. Windner. The prisoners were then passing in front of the Freller farm. The moment of entering any of the KL was an unforgettable experience. It was normal to enter Mauthausen’s fortress through this main gate, but some survivors (Tillard, Mauthausen, 14; and Navarro, in Razola and Constante, 48–9) remember passing through the garage gate, surmounted by the German eagle. 5 However cursory the medical check-up might be, the washroom could accommodate only so many at a time. A convoy of 30 prisoners might move at once down the steps, but larger groups would be kept standing in the area described above. 6 Maricones, Spanish colloquialism equivalent to ‘faggots’. 7 ‘Enriquito’, known also to the Spaniards as ‘Manolita’, was Mauthausen’s official German-Spanish interpreter. Despite his effeminate manner, he was sufficiently Nazi to have been selected for a mission to Spain before the Civil War began. His atrocious Spanish could not have helped him in his mission. He was arrested in Barcelona in

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13 14 15 16

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20

1937 and remained in prison until liberated by the Nationalists after the fall of Barcelona. On his return to Germany, his superiors considered that he had failed in his mission and he was sent to Mauthausen, but with a red, not a pink, triangle, and most importantly—as a Kapo. He was assigned to Block 13 (Juan de Portado [Antonio García Alonso], Hispania, 73 (Jan. 1982); 74, (Apr. 1982). The account by Jean Laffitte (Pendaison, 81, 269) is not only self-contradictory but almost certainly wrong. He offers two different versions of his name and background, stating that he was an SS lieutenant in the Spanish Civil War who was cashiered for homosexuality; that he received a pink triangle and was assigned as Blockschreiber to Block 14; and that he was not mean to his fellow-prisoners. García Alonso (interview) emphatically disagrees. This practice of itemizing the personal possessions of KZ prisoners continued, throughout the Mauthausen complex, up to 1942 (Diego, interview). On entering the Wäscherei, the prisoner would turn left into the anteroom; to the right was a crematorium. Behind the anteroom were two doors, for entrance and exit. The room behind contained sixty showers, installed in late 1942; unlike those at Gusen there was no stoup, so no one could drown. The temperature of these showers would change, by design, from scalding hot to freezing cold (Sheppard, interview; Le Chêne, 60; Renaud, 18). Cf. Delfieu, 106: ‘I was never once sick, or even indisposed by the slightest cold.’ Many survivors have reported the same. The origin of the quarantine system is probably to be found in the outbreak of poliomyelitis in Ravensbrück in Aug. 1941. For three weeks, the SS remained outside the camp, leaving the Kapos in control (Tillion, 489). These include the published accounts of Tillard, Mauthausen, 14–20; Aldebert, 22; Marceline Bilbao and Patricio Serrano, in Razola and Constante, 36, 38, 41–2; Vilanova, 115, 132–3; Juan de Portado, Hispania, 73 (Jan. 1982), and 74 (Apr. 1982); and various oral accounts by survivors at reunions in Paris and Mauthausen. García Barrado, interview. Bernadac, 186 marches, 68. Razola and Constante, 37–8. Vilanova, 129–30. The normal route was not the main road along the Danube but the shorter and narrower road that ran behind the village, bordered on the right by woods that theoretically offered the chance for escape. No prisoner was ever known to have escaped on the road. A survivor of Ebensee writes of the fear felt by the incoming prisoner of dropping in the snow and being unable to rise, there to freeze to death in some grotesque position (Debrise, 158). Renaud, 17. Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen,’ 914–15, who cites Gerhard Kanthack. Antonio García came to know his fellow-Catalan Conill since the Erkennungsdienst shared the Block with the disinfection Kommando. Conill told him that he had amassed a small fortune from the valuables, including gold ingots, which he had found hidden in the clothing, especially the shoulder-pads, of the prisoners. When the war was over, he said, he would be rich and he would never have to work another day in his life. García told him that for his part it would be blessing enough to get out of Mauthausen with his life, however poor he might be for the rest of it. No one, García adds, believes that Conill came out of Mauthausen with his fortune (interview). García Barrado, interview.

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 307

21 Drexler, interview. 22 Neumüller, interview. 23 On 7 Apr. 1941, of 348 Spaniards who arrived at the station, 48 ‘disappeared’ between the station and the camp (Fabréguet, ‘Républicains’, 37). It is certain that they did not escape. Alan Levy (63) reports that in the convoy in which Simon Wiesenthal arrived in Feb. 1945 no fewer than 180 died between the station and the Lager. 24 Daix, interview. 25 Josef Jahn, Bürgermeister of Mauthausen, interview. 26 R.P.Riquet, interview; Renaud, 16. 27 Santísteban, interview. 28 García Alonso, interview. 29 Tillard, Pain, 13. 30 Wetterwald, 35. 31 Dobiáš, interview. 32 Le Chêne, 59. 33 García Barrado, interview. 34 Chozas, interview. Chozas had been taken prisoner at Dunkirk, in the uniform of the Compagnies de Travailleurs. After passing through Stalag XII-D in Trier, where with the rest he was interrogated by the Gestapo, he arrived in KL-Mauthausen on 20 Jan. 1941. 35 García Barrado, interview.

2 The outer circle: the SS staff 1 Fabréguet, 1022. 2 Diego, interview; Vilanova, 193, 211; Laffitte, Pendaison, 57. Laffitte (75) adds that the Spaniards also called him ‘el chino’ on account of his narrow eyes. 3 García Alonso, interview. 4 Vilém Stašek, in Mauthausen, documentary film directed by Karl M.Brousek. 5 Ibid. Stašek, who was Ziereis’ orderly, saw Ida Ziereis only twice (in the tailor’s shop) and never spoke with her (letter from Mariánské Lázne of 4 Nov. 1992). Stašek’s testimony nevertheless demolishes the claim of Ida, who gave a signed statement to US authorities: ‘I never entered the camp…. I therefore know nothing of what was going on there’ (Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 1093). 6 Ida Ziereis appears to be as emotionally unbalanced as her husband. At the Cologne trial in 1967, Ziereis’ widow told the court that their marriage was so unhappy that she wanted to divorce him. She claimed that she opposed her husband’s activities. Constante, always a doubtful source, claims (Yo fui, 224) that Ida Ziereis shared fully in her husband’s work, and that the leading figures in the SS were received in her home. Le Chêne (35) is surely in error in calling Ziereis ‘a model husband and a devoted father’. The description does fit Bachmayer, however. 7 Ziereis had several homes, including a small wood-built house in the woods near the Danube which he used when he went hunting. While waiting for the work on their villa to be completed, the family lived in a small house in St Georgen, where Ida was

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9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16

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21

well-known (Martha Gammer, St Georgen, letter of 3 Nov. 1997). Ziereis also had his own private plane. The published account by Mariano Constante of the bestiality of Ida and the children (cf. Pike, Service, 112) is not to be trusted. Juan de Diego, not an anticommunist and moderate in his judgement of others, calls Constante’s account ‘a lie’ (interview). Santísteban, with open contempt for Constante, challenges him to describe face to face the interior of the villa (interview). It is probable, once again, that Constante has compiled his story on the basis of remarks picked up from Santísteban and perhaps other prisoners who were sent at some time or other to the commandant’s home. Santísteban describes his only experience when he was ordered to carry a crate of apples to the villa. ‘I was escorted by an SS. We knocked at the door. A maid answered. She grabbed me and hurled me into the hall, so that I stumbled. I heard the sound of a monster coming down the stairs. She was huge. She said nothing and gave me two apples. Her son, not in uniform, appeared and went up to the SS escort, who failed to salute. “You forget to salute the son of the Lagerführer?” cried the boy, striking the guard, who then saluted. Then we left. On the way back the guard ordered me to give him one of the apples, and let me keep the other. We walked away, munching’ (interview). Juan de Diego also remembers the time when Bachmayer gave him an apple. Such events stick in the survivors’ memory precisely because they suggest a humanity that normally had no place there at all. Neumüller, interview. Pappalettera, Parola, 149. Diego, interview. Bulletin de l’Amicale de Mauthausen, 123 (June 1965). Ziereis shared Hitler’s and Himmler’s fondness for animals. His pig farm, opposite Block 5 but outside the fortress wall, reached a total of 135 pigs and piglets. A rabbit farm, made up of Angoras, which Himmler loved, was maintained at Gusen. In the very few SS records that escaped destruction at the end, these pigs and rabbits figure prominently (Bernadac, Jours, 324). Laffitte, Pendaison, 74. Le Chêne, 175. Diego, interview. Ibid. Wilhelm Ornstein recounts the remark made by Bachmayer in November 1944 when some 100 prisoners were hanged, including two young Jewish girls: ‘Die Juden werden eine schöne Nacht haben’ (‘Krematorium’, 3). Constante, Yo fui, 222–3. Pappalettera, Parola, 86–7. His name is given by Tillion consistently as Karl Schulze, and even Maršálek is in doubt about the spelling. The confusion is made worse by the presence in the Politische Abteilung of a subordinate by the name of Karl Heinrich Schulz. It appears that Schulz changed the spelling of his name while in hiding after the war. Adolf Zutter, to US Capt. A.J.Hackl, Linz, 2 Aug. 1945 (Bundesarchiv, Berlin 1169/ 98/4 NS 4 Ma/vorl. 56). The actual murders were apparently entrusted to Niedermayer in the Bunker. According to the proceedings of his post-war trial, Schulz rented his apartment from the village pharmacist. The only pharmacist in Mauthausen was Mag. pharm. Aichberger, whose pharmacy since 1846 has been in the village centre. The present pharmacist, Mag. pharm. Norbert Aichberger, is his son. Norbert Aichberger, who

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 309

22

23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

46

47

was 12-years-old in 1945, insists that Schulz never lived in the village pharmacy (Martha Gammer, St Georgen, letter of 22 Jan. 1998). Fassel, as Schulz’s adjutant, held the title of Stellvertreter des Leiters der Politische Abteilung. As for Prellberg, despite his aristocratic origin, up until his entry into the SS he was the owner of a laundry in Braunschweig (Bernadac, 186 marches, 189). Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 891. Diego, interview; Bulletin de l’Amicale de Mauthausen, 136 (Sep. 1967); Pappalettera, Parola, 62, 72–9, 215–21. At his trial, Werner Fassel admitted to the use of the stove, but gave his opinion that no one intended to inflict physical pain on the victim (Pappalettera, Parola, 82). García Alonso, interview. Bernadac, 186 marches, 190. Constante, Yo fui, 141. Eisenhofer, whose title was Wach-und Lagermannschaft des KLM, was tried and hanged at Dachau in 1947. Bulletin de l’Amicale de Mauthausen, 136 (Sept. 1967). Maršálek, Geschichte, 206. Diego, interview; Maršálek, Geschichte, 62. Pappalettera, Parola, 204–6, 210–11. Diego, interview; Vilanova, 175. Razola and Constante, 65. Pappalettera, Parola, 140–1. Marcelino Bilbao, in Razola and Constante, 65. Tillard, Mauthausen, 20. García Alonso (interview). Pappalettera, Parola, 140. Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 65. Ibid. 59. A document signed by Trum proves the correct spelling of his name. Andreas Trum has been confused by various writers with Franz Trumm. Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 56. Niedermayer’s own estimate, presented at his trial (Pappalettera, Parola, 94). Ibid. 91. Bargueño had arrived in France at the end of the Spanish Civil War, passing through Argelès, Septfonds, and Le Vernet. Taken prisoner in June 1940, he was held in a Stalag until October 1941 when he was sent to Mauthausen. There he worked for 15 days in the quarry before he was assigned to the Donaulinde Kommando, and from there, in November 1941, to the Nebenlager in Steyr. In Steyr, his Blockälteste and Kapo, the Czech pink-triangle Franz, selected him as his Blockschreiber. For an infringement of the rules he not only lost his post but received the standard 25 lashes. (Franz was later beaten to death by his fellow-prisoners.) When, in July 1943, Bargueño was too sick to work, he was sent back to the Hauptlager, and after a stay in the Sanitätslager he recovered (Bargueño, interview; Bargueño, 100–5; Borrás [Lluch], 203–4). Notably, by Juan de Diego. Apart from his small contributution to the work of Razola and Constante, Bargueño produced (with the help of his friend Pedro Hernández) the short work Mauthausen nunca más; though not intended for sale, it is nevertheless a compendium of inaccuracies and generalities. Bargueño, interview.

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48 The family of Duke Albrecht of Bavaria, pretender to the Bavarian throne, and head of a dynasty dating back more than 800 years, was among those held hostage, though not in Mauthausen. After the outbreak of war, the Duke had offered his services to the Wehrmacht, but his offer had been rejected, and in 1944 he, his wife and their four children were arrested by the Gestapo and held in KL-Sachsenhausen, Flossenbürg, and Dachau, where they were liberated by the US Third Army. 49 Nicolas Horthy, arrested on 15 Oct. 1944, was code-named ‘Maus’ by the SS, and placed in Cell 1 from the end of 1944. 50 Mario Badoglio was a diplomat who had served as an ambassador in Africa. After his father had established his government under Allied auspices in Salerno, Mario was in his home in Rome when, in late 1944, he was arrested by the Gestapo. He was then 44-years-old. Dispatched to Mauthausen, he was placed in Cell 2 and given the codename ‘Brausenwetter’ or (according to Maršálek, Geschichte, 339) ‘Brausepulver’. At the same time, the Gestapo in Italy informed Schulz that a member of the Badoglio family was already in the Lager. The prisoner in question was Gino Valenzano, who had been arrested on a Roman street on 20 Nov. 1943 for his resistance activities, and not because his grandmother was the Marshal’s sister. Knowing enough about the SS, he took care, on his arrival in Mauthausen in Jan. 1944, both to conceal the fact that he was a university student and to assume a manual skill, claiming falsely that he was a motor mechanic. He was therefore working in the garage Kommando a year later when he was suddenly grabbed by the SS and deposited in the Arrest, where Niedermayer threw him into the last cell on the left in the prison’s left aisle. Valenzano, one of the few prisoners to come out of the Bunker alive, recalls how each prisoner had his own cell, from which he never emerged to take exercise, and remained in total isolation. For two days and nights Niedermayer softened him up, and he was then dragged to an office outside the main gate where Ziereis and Schulz together interrogated him on his relationship with Marshal Badoglio and his son Mario. Valenzano faced a dilemma: he could admit that he was Mario’s cousin and possibly receive the privileges accorded to members of a famous family, or he could play it safe and say that he knew nothing about politics or about the Badoglio side of the family. Valenzano chose the second, though it carried its own risk: his uncle Valenzano was indeed the Marshal’s secretary. The outcome, however, came as a relief: he was allowed to return to his Block 15 and to his work in the SS garage. He surmised from the interrogation that his cousin Mario was being held in the Bunker as a hostage, but they were never to meet in Mauthausen. In April 1945, Mario Badoglio was taken by the SS to the Bavarian Alps, and though still alive at the Liberation, he was in a state of such depression that he never recovered his health, dying prematurely in 1958 (Valenzano, interview). 51 Maršálek, ‘Mauthausen’, 6. 52 Pappalettera, Parola, 94. 53 Diego, interview; Pappalettera, Parola, 188; Vilanova 177. Ziereis, on his death-bed, gave Killermann’s first name as Michael. 54 There were other rules to learn. A prisoner reporting to a superior stopped at a distance of six metres from him. A prisoner passing an SS officer had to doff his cap while still at the same distance of six metres, proceed at a strict military pace with his eyes straight ahead, and then don his cap when he was six metres past the officer (Bernadac, Jours, 305).

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 311

55 Constante, Yo fui, 188, 190; Borrás [Lluch], 379. Sir Robert Sheppard adds that Müller much resembled the German and world heavyweight champion Max Schmeling (letter of 26 Sept. 1989). 56 Pappalettera, Parola, 81, 98. 57 García Barrado, interview. 58 Diego, interview; García Barrado, interview; Santísteban, interview. Kogon (391–2) refers to the case of SS-Untersturmführer Hans Himmler, nephew of the Reichsführer himself, who in a drunken state committed certain indiscretions. The Reichsführer ordered him not only to be stripped of his rank but sentenced to death; he then relented, allowing him to ‘redeem’ himself as a paratrooper on the Italian front. When Hans Himmler again showed signs of incalcitrance, he was again arrested and imprisoned and finally executed and incinerated in KL-Dachau. 59 Diego, interview. Maršálek (Geschichte, 3rd ed., 325) identifies the officer as SSSturmbannführer Kurt Geissler, who as a prisoner received from the SS the name of Kurt Schneider. He was released on 9 Apr. 1945, and while assigned to the Kommandanturstab he remained an opponent of the regime, as shown by his attempt on 29 or 30 Apr. 1945 to make contact with the German prisoner Franz Dahlem on the International Committee.

3 The inner circle: the Kapos 1 At Gusen, where the brothel opened its doors in Oct. or Nov. 1942, the primary purpose was to put an end to the pederasty into which certain Kapos, mainly Green, were forcing Polish and Russian youths (Boüard, ‘Gusen’, 59; Le Chêne, 87). 2 It would seem that the Kapos, without exception, were drunkards. The exchange rate for a bottle of Polish vodka (Šliwowica) was between 300 and 350 cigarettes (Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 914, quoting Gerhard Kanthack). If the Kapos had nothing else, they would drink raw alcohol mixed with jam. The survivor Charles Renaud claims (57) they would bargain with the SS guards for the gold in the prisoners’ teeth, and that they would even tear out the teeth of the living with pincers. 3 Laffitte, Pendaison, 142. 4 Himmler, 203. 5 Pappalettera, Parola, 40–1. Přemysl Dobiáš, who had already graduated in law from Karl University in Prague, attests to the dilemma faced by the educated class: what should the prisoner give as a profession? He chose wisely (interview). At Buchenwald, Jorge Semprún replied ‘Student’, but a sympathetic prisoner saw the danger and wrote the word ‘Stukateur’ (stucco-plasterer) (interview). It no doubt saved his life (A.Conesa, Hispania, 4° época, no. 19, June–July 1995, 9). The cudgels, or gummi, carried by the Kapos were hose-pipes braided with iron wire, 80 centimetres in length (Tillard, Mauthausen, 16). 6 Pappalettera, Parola, 169. This was part of Zoller’s scheme to save his own life. It failed: he was hanged. 7 Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 59; Le Chêne, 76. The armband worn by the incumbent, in white on black, read: ‘L.Ält.1’, etc.

312 NOTES TO PP. XVI–3

8 Vilanova (136) is in error in making a distinction between Magnus Keller and ‘King Kong’, whose real name he gives as Hermann. Hermann was another Kapo, who was bayoneted to death by an SS (Pappalettera, Parola, 231). 9 Laffitte (Ceux, 293), who was with Keller at Ebensee, denies this, as do others who say that Keller preferred to order a killing than to kill with his own hands. Keller may have changed his style in the course of his long KZ career. 10 Debrise, 125; Wetterwald, 92; Pappalettera, Parola, 228–9; Maršálek, Geschichte, 316. Gilbert Debrise, the pseudonym of Gilbert Dreyfus, was a French doctor permitted to practice both in Mauthausen and Ebensee, and after the war became known as Professor Gilbert-Dreyfus. 11 Vilanova, 136. There may well have been more than one Kapo known to the Spaniards as ‘el Gitano’; one of the Kapos in the quarry at Gusen was also known by that name (Laffitte, Ceux, 294). The name ‘el Gitano’ did not necessarily refer to a brown-triangle Gypsy, who was little more eligible than a Jew for a Kapo post; like ‘el Negro’, ‘el Gitano’ was a favourite nickname for dark-skinned Spaniards from Andalusia. 12 Tillard, Mauthausen, 20. 13 Boüard ‘Mauthausen’, 65; Maršálek, Geschichte, 40. Laffitte (Pendaison, 40) describes Zaremba as small and dark, simian in appearance, with a voice so raucous it was instantly recognisable. 14 Pappalettera, Parola, 145, 156. 15 Debrise, 158; Wetterwald, 94, 99; Laffitte, Ceux, 166. Among Karl’s victims were the Spaniards Alonso and Rodríguez. The latter may have been Enrique Rodríguez, who had previously been kicked in the stomach by an SS with such force that it crushed a kidney and the next day he was urinating blood (Vilanova, 175). Cf. Boix (in Dubost, 143) and Laffitte (Pendaison, 193) who identifies the drum major as a certain Schulz, a German from Berlin working in the kitchen Kommando who was once a clown and was now suspected of being a spy. 16 They included August Adam, who was transferred from the Hauptlager with a promotion to Oberkapo, and five of his subordinates, all of them Greens like Adam: Karl Horcicka, Emil Lipinski, Otto Schneidereit, Richard Wuggenig, and Franz Zach. Schneidereit and Zach, like Adam, were Austrians from Vienna (Pappalettera, Passerai, 201–2). 17 Pappalettera, Parola, 14; José Sanz, ‘Recuerdos’. Domingo, González, and two other Spaniards (Moisés Fernández and Laureano Navas) were arrested as war criminals in 1945 by the US 511th CIC Detachment and were put on trial at Dachau on 23 July 1947. Charged with murdering two fellow-prisoners by plunging their heads into a cesspit, González was sentenced to death (Bulletin de l’Amicale de Mauthausen, 8–9 (May–Sept. 1947); Pappalettera, Parola, 187; Le Chêne, 175, 266). As for ‘el Negro’, that nickname, like that of ‘el Gitano’, was given to more than one Kapo. It was given, for example, to a German gypsy Kapo at Mauthausen Haupdager who especially hated Jews (Le Chêne, 74). 18 ‘El Negus’ has been wrongly identified by several writers as ‘el Negro’. ‘El Negus’ wanted revenge on the French for the months he had spent in 1939 interned at Argèles-sur-mer (Tillard, Mauthausen, 20). 19 The case of Palleja was heard by the court on 11 Mar. 1947. Jean Laffitte was among those who gave evidence. Palleja was sentenced to death.

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 313

4 The first Spanish contingents 1 The date of 6 Aug. 1940 is confirmed by Juan de Diego, who arrived in the first contingent. Cinca (63), Vilanova (131) and Alfaya (in Abellán, ii. 106) are in error. So are Razola and Constante (38) in assuming it arrived from Angoulême. Juan de Diego recounts that his group arrived in French uniform. At the moment of their arrival, the new station was being constructed by the prisoners, who were busy putting up the wall. The road to the camp, he adds, was not paved at that time (interview). 2 Pappalettera, Parola, 66. Frédéric Ricol, the brother of Lise, was the leader of French communist youth. 3 José Escobedo, in Razola and Constante, 38–9. Delfieu (42) reports that his group arrived at Mauthausen after 57 hours in the train; they were thrown on to the platform naked. 4 Aldebert, 12. 5 Constante, Yo fui, 290. He adds that only 32 of them were still alive in May 1945. 6 Heim, 12. 7 Aldebert (20) writes that his group arrived at 5 p.m., at a time when many Austrians were waiting for trains; they were all witnesses to the scene. 8 The steps could not, therefore, have been built by the Spaniards. But since the Spaniards built the ramparts, the road, and so much else of Mauthausen, it would explain why Tillard (Mauthausen, 33), despite his personal experience as an inmate, would write that it was the Spaniards who built the steps. 9 Razola and Constante, 39, 46–7; Le Chêne, 110. 10 Diego, interview; Cinca, 74; Razola and Constante, 38; Vilanova, 132; Le Chêne, 110; Pilar Claver, in Català, 104–5. Several authors have stated that some of the women and children were sent to Ravensbrück. While Spanish women and children were indeed sent to Ravensbrück, on this particular occasion, reports the eye-witness Lázaro Nates, all the women, with their daughters and under-aged sons, were sent back to Spain (interview). 11 Though Anna Strasser published her memoirs in 1982, she has never revealed the full name of Annemarie. Nor does she communicate her own address, though she still lives in St Valentin. 12 Strasser, 5–6, 9. Anna Strasser was arrested in St Valentin on 11 Sep. 1944 and held in a Gestapo prison until the end of the war. Her ordeal is described in her memoirs. 13 Lázaro Nates is adamant on this point, in an article he wrote under the pseudonym of el Pua: ‘España, Anguleme, Mauthausen’, Hispania, 55, 2nd series (Nov. 1976). 14 Vilanova, 110. 15 Roig, ‘Generación’, 36. 16 Laffitte, interview; Vilanova, 110; cf. Heim, 14. Tillard (Mauthausen, 44) recounts that 30 men from each national group, all working in the quarry, were assigned to an experiment to test the difference in working capacity among the various national groups. The SS proudly announced that the competition had been won by the Germans. 17 Santísteban and Nates, interview; Roig, ‘Generación’, 36. At that time, in 1940, there was no quarantine, so they started the very first day in the quarry.

314 NOTES TO PP. XVI–3

18 The father, Francisco Cortés, was already an invalid, with an artificial leg, and the eldest son, José, had lost an arm. When, in Gusen, an SS began brutalizing his father, José struck back and he and his father were killed. Jacinto, 17-years-old when he reached Mauthausen, was sent to the quarry, while Manuel, who was only 15-years-old, was made a Stubendiener (Cortés, interview). 19 Juan de Diego holds the full list of members of the Poschacherjugend, and it shows 50 names (not 38 as usually reported), with their ages on their arrival in 1940 given as follows: one aged 13, three aged 14, seven aged 15, five aged 16, thirteen aged 17, sixteen aged 18, five aged 19. The youngest of all was Félix Quesada Herrerias, from Prat de Llobregat, born on 4 May 1927. 20 Some authors have written that these Poschacher boys were assigned to work in Mauthausen village and the surrounding farms. Lázaro Nates, a former Poschacher youth, denies this, saying that a few only worked in the camp farm (interview). 21 Santísteban, interview. Manuel García (interview) refers to a priest from Mauthausen sent up to the Lager; he died within three days. 22 Santísteban, interview. 23 Ibid. 24 Jahn, interview. Josef Jahn, a native of Mauthausen, and in time its Bürgermeister, was 12-years-old when the war ended. Diego (interview) remarks on Jahn’s testimony: ‘It is possible, but it would have had to be done in total secrecy.’ Erich Neumüller (interview) testifies to the fights between SS and Wehrmacht soldiers from the Enns barracks who would come in at night to drink, but is equally sceptical about the SS executing Wehrmacht soldiers: ‘Not that the SS were not capable of it, but the risk was too great. Suppose the word got out.’ 25 The SS wives, predominantly German, made a poor impression on the village: ‘they were arrogant to everyone’ (Neumüller, interview). Neumüller remembers the courageous action of Franz Winklehner, the manager in the agricultural co-operative near Mauthausen station, in throwing bread and cigarettes to passing prisoners; he was arrested and sent to Dachau, where he died in 1941. Andreas Gruber (interview) speaks of the man from Schwertberg who delivered milk to the SS in the camp: ‘He felt pity for the prisoners, and tried to deliver food to them. He also said that some of the SS men were lonely and wanted to speak but couldn’t speak.’ In St Valentin, Valentine Weigl-Hallenberg wondered how the starving prisoners could possibly have the strength to stand up, let alone to work, and found the courage to tell an SS: ‘What you are doing is horrible.’ ‘One word more,’ replied the SS, ‘and you’re going up to the Lager’ (interview). 26 Vilanova, 214–15; Roig, ‘Generación’, 37. 27 Nates, interview. 28 Razola and Constante, 85. 29 Alfaya, 106. Mariano Constante arrived on 7 Apr. 1941 and Manuel Razola on 26 Apr. 1941 (Razola and Constante, 57). 30 Boüard, ‘Gusen’, 50; cited in Le Chêne, 213.

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 315

5 International friction and the brothel 1 This situation was not, of course, peculiar to Mauthausen. At Dachau as elsewhere, relations among the national groups were equally poor; cf. Rovan, 65–96. 2 Razola and Constante, 105. Cf. Debrise, 65: ‘The French in Mauthausen were looked upon as traitors by the Spaniards, Czechs and others.’ 3 Laffitte, Ceux, 173. The matter runs much deeper than mere politics. The account by the Briton Christopher Burney (67, 97–104) of the behaviour of the French in Buchenwald is a terrible indictment, but it is written with pain and reluctance by one ‘who had known France intimately and loved her before the war and loved her and worked for her during it’. Burney arrived in Buchenwald in a convoy of 2000 Frenchmen. ‘The French’, he writes, ‘were slovenly, greedy, lazy and succumbed both physically and morally more readily than any other people…. They were cowed by the enemy’s show of force and had too little faith in themselves to make the necessary moral come-back to join us…. We had no wish to appear condescending, we only wanted to see a flicker of real spirit. But it never came, and we went our separate ways, ourselves to freedom, even in honourable death, and they to a life of bitter bickering or a death of misery, and in either case of shame before themselves and before others. What right had Frenchmen so to behave, so to betray themselves and each other that uncouth savages hailing from countries still plunged in the Dark Ages scorned them and said to them: “Franzas Scheisse!”…. Their minds seemed to foment eternally, but some missing function of their spirit rendered them impotent either for action or for compassion with each other…. Those who should have taken the command, and who had in fact the opportunity to help—the many senior and junior officers of the Army and Air Force—shrank from responsibility…’ Eugen Kogon, also at Buchenwald, provides a series of studies of national groups (in the only camp he knew) and shares this opinion, placing the French with the Poles and the Ukrainians as the three groups open to criticism, but Kogon is gentler in his critiques (Kogon, 415–16). The Frenchman Maurice Delfieu, interned in Mauthausen, corroborates this sad portrait of his countrymen: ‘Far from bringing us together, misfortune drove us apart. Far from kindling feelings of nationhood, of overcoming the causes of disagreement based on class difference, political opinion or religious persuasion, far from softening the hard edges of our characters, exile made us intolerant, sectarian, irascible and pitiless’ (Delfieu, 210–11). The Italian Italo Tibaldi, interned in Ebensee, testified: ‘Frenchmen, Belgians and Luxemburgers wasted the few opportunities that came up to communicate by engaging in sterile political discussions’ (Pappalettera, Passerai, 223). Another French survivor of Mauthausen, Charles Renaud, a chauvinist who cannot conceal his dislike of Spaniards and Jews, admits that a French group was badly demoralized even at the moment it entered the camp (Renaud, 65). Against this sombre portrait one should set the model of indomitable courage which other Frenchmen provided, especially, in Mauthausen, the French doctors and Père Michel Riquet, and in Buchenwald and Dachau, the abbé Georges Hénocque. In fact, the Spaniards speak highly of the French in Mauthausen; their only criticism, stronger now than before, is aimed at the chauvinism evident at their reunions and in their historiography. 4 Daix, interview. 5 Cf. above, II. 3, n. 18. Even this Kapo was shocked by the savagery of his superiors: the SS officer known as the ‘blonde young lady’ and the Kapo known as Hans the Killer. These two were responsible for a frenzied attack, witnessed by the Spanish prisoners under ‘el Negus’, on a group of 87 Dutch Jews who had just arrived at

316 NOTES TO PP. XVI–3

6 7

8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26 27

Mauthausen. Several of them had Spanish names, and spoke an antiquated form of Castilian which is a branch of Latin. They were all working on the granite face of the quarry when the SS officer and the Kapo waded into them, raining blows on their heads. The Dutchmen thought that if they worked harder they would be spared. No one was spared. ‘El Negus’ went on telling his group: ‘No miréis, trabajad!’ (‘Don’t look, get on with your work!’) By 11.30 a.m. the two tormentors had beaten to death 47 of the 87 Jews, but they were tired, so they stopped for lunch. After lunch they resumed. At the end of the day, there were only three Dutchmen left alive (Tillard, Mauthausen, 22). The antiquated form of Castilian spoken by some of the Dutch Jews was also spoken by several of the Greek Jews from Salonika, testifying to the common experience of their ancestors, driven from Spain after 1492. They would say, for example, ‘fambre’ for ‘hambre’ (hunger). Bernadac, Jours, 49. Roig, Noche, 227. The Italian mortality rate, especially at Gusen, was among the highest. Gino Valenzano, one of the 480 Italians who were deported from Rome on 4 Jan. 1944, passing through Dachau to Mauthausen, reports that only 22 of them survived to the day of liberation, and only seven of these returned to Italy alive (Valenzano, 11). Razola and Constante, 105. Diego, interview. Tillard, 33; Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 57. García Alonso, interview. The photo was printed and saved by Antonio García, and was finally published in Le Caër, K.L.Mauthausen: Schlier/Redl-Zipf. Francesc Boix, in Dubost, 153–4. Alfaya, 115. José Amat Piniella nevertheless held the distinction, while a prisoner in Mauthausen, of surviving a sentence of three months in the punishment company, as is shown in the surviving German records (Borrás [Lluch], 369). Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 57. Tillard, Mauthausen, 34. Riquet, 292. Nates and Santísteban, interview. Razola and Constante, 57. Cinca, 154. Diego, interview. Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 57. Valenzano, 90. At Gusen, the women took their exercise in an enclosure behind the Block, and were seldom if ever seen by the ordinary prisoners. The gypsy, Lily Strauss, was exceptionally beautiful. When she fell sick, it was the Spaniard Salvador Ginestà, working in the SS Revier, who saved her life, giving his blood to Professor Podlaha. Juan de Diego is of the opinion that at Mauthausen all the prostitutes were gypsies (interview). Cf. Laffitte, Pendaison, 227–30. Francisco Bernal, as Kapo of the cobbler’s shop, and Antonio García, as assistant in the photo lab, were among the few and accepted the privilege, only once in the case of García. The account given here is based largely on their testimony.

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 317

28 These Bordellscheine were known to the inmates as ‘Sprungkarten’. One Mark went to the SS and one Mark to the prostitute. 29 Diego, interview; García Alonso, interview; Laffitte, Pendaison, 228; Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 606. 30 Tillard, Mauthausen, 40. 31 Razola and Constante, 105. 32 Diego, interview. 33 Suslak to Barta, as recorded in Barta’s diary on 13 July 1944 (Barta, private correspondence). I follow Barta’s spelling of Suslak’s name, in preference to that of the Ebensee survivor Dr Wetterwald, who gives Susok. 34 Tillion, 412–13. 35 Dobiáš, interview; García Alonso, interview; Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 57. Among the Czech survivors was Ota Sik, an architect and industrial designer who was selected for the Siedlungsbaubüro. Antonio García remembers him as a co-habiter of Block 2, where at mealtimes he would kiss his lover (the Spaniard Clemente, who worked in the Effektenkammer, not to be confused with the Spaniard Climent) on the mouth, to the disgust of others. This did not harm Sik’s career: after the war he became a prominent member of the Czech communist government, serving as aide to Artur London. Another Czech prisoner who survived was the dentist Haussmann, who after the war became chief of police in Prague, but left Czechoslovakia during the Prague spring to take up residence in Vienna. It was Haussmann who told Antonio García the circumstances of Lise Ricol’s condemnation of her husband Artur London at the time of the latter’s trial for treason: ‘Lise Ricol did not know that her husband was innocent. The Party is always right. One must prove one’s innocence.’ 36 Barta had been arrested by the Gestapo in Prague on 9 June 1942. He was transferred to Redl Zipf (Schlier) on 10 Oct. 1943, and to Ebensee, in the first convoy of 63 prisoners, on 18 Nov. 1943.

6 The Spaniards as seen by others 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Maršálek, Geschichte, 360. Ibid. 249. Burney, 113. Rousset, interview. Rovan, 93. For a negative and totally biased appraisal, cf. Renaud, 56. Diego, interview. García Barrado, interview. Maršálek, Geschichte, 353. The Spaniards’ use of the word ‘agua’ (water) as a warning signal became adopted by all prisoners in Mauthausen. 9 Artur London, in Razola and Constante, 122; Vilanova, 197; Rubio, Guerra civil, 409. 10 Maršálek, Geschichte, 299. The Czech Drahomir Barta also paid tribute to their extraordinary cohesion (Langbein, Résistance, 214). So did the Italian Gino Valenzano (interview). 11 Michelet, 154–6. Cf. the memoirs of Charles Renaud, a survivor of Ebensee, who combines chauvinism with a dislike of both Jews and Spaniards (56, 125).

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12 13 14 15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25

26 27

Jean Benech, ‘Le Revier’, Bulletin de l’Amicale de Mauthausen, 37 (May 1954). Suppl., Bulletin de l’Amicale de Mauthausen, 210 (June 1982). Wetterwald, 137. R.P.Riquet, ‘L’Europe à Mauthausen’, Études, June 1945; cited in Alfaya, 116. Interviewed in 1992 at the age of 93, Père Riquet, whose mind and memory remained very alert, expressed again his admiration for the cohesion of the Spanish community ‘and its readiness to help the French’. Laffitte to the author, Mauthausen, 7 May 1995. Laffitte, Ceux, 268–9. Laffitte (Pendaison, 225–31) identifies the Spaniard who was cast out as Gamela, and describes his fate. Hispania, 73 (Jan. 1982). Diego, interview; Nates, interview. Diego, interview; Esteban Balogh, in Razola and Constante, 73–4. Cf. Pike, Service, 102. Mauthausen, 40. Laffitte, Ceux, 180. Sheppard (interview). The Catalans and masonry have been long associated. Not for nothing was St Eulalia, the patron saint of masons, chosen as the patron saint of Barcelona. Many have remarked that the granite blocks on the higher level of the ramparts, which were shaped and placed by the Spaniards, were much better cut and more accurately fitted. Juan de Diego, returning to Mauthausen in 1995, called the author’s attention to the precision of the stones of the watch-tower on the corner of the garage gate—the first that the visitor sees—and with ironic pride said that when he first arrived in 1940 he helped to build it. Those working in the mason Kommando were very fortunate to have a Kapo, Emil Koziats, who never struck a prisoner. Koziats was a Pole of German origin, and though a Green, was probably antiNazi (Laffitte, Pendaison, 137). Malle, ‘Empire’, 108; Bernadac, Jours, 31. The Italian survivor Fabio Luppino recounts a similar incident involving a father and son. The SS ordered the son to slap his father in the face. The son hesitated. ‘Slap his face, I told you!’ roared the SS. ‘Do it, son,’ said the father, ‘it’s our only hope.’ Again the son hesitated. The SS struck him to the ground. Still the boy found it impossible to carry out the order. The SS shot him in front of his father (Ghigi, 40). Riquet, 299; Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 57. Mauthausen was not alone in this: Buchenwald too had its library, with each book stamped the property of the library, lest any prisoner should run away from the camp with an overdue library book (Semprún, interview).

7 The paradox of entertainment 1 Diego, interview. Tillard (Mauthausen, 54) writes of only three teams: German, Spanish and Polish. Antonio García speaks of six: German, Austrian, Czech, Polish, Spanish, and Yugoslav, with a seventh (mixed) team which was cap tained by the Spaniard Clemente and included his minion Ota Sik. 2 Diego, Dobiáš, García Alonso, interviews. 3 Le Chêne, 137–8; Maršálek, Geschichte, 357; Borrás [Lluch], 264.

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 319

4 More than one survivor has spoken of ‘secret’ concerts, as if the SS were unaware of them or the Kapos unwilling to report them, which is impossible to believe. Herbert Zipper, a celebrated Viennese conductor, was sent to Dachau and later to Buchenwald. In Dachau he assembled an orchestra from former members of Munich and Vienna orchestras and composed the Dachau Lied, a song of resistance that spread from camp to camp. He died in Santa Monica in 1997, aged 92. In Buchenwald, according to Jorge Semprún (interview), the prisoners formed a jazz band which he describes as ‘clandestine’, without explaining the anomaly. 5 Laffitte (Pendaison, 33) writes that to make his supervision easier, Ullmann arranged for Streitwolf to become his assistant postmaster. García Alonso (interview) thinks Streitwolf was already working in the Poststelle, which explains how Ullmann came to know that Streitwolf had musical talent. 6 Diego, interview. 7 Antonio Terres (‘Músico’), who had played clarinet in the Zigeunerkapelle now played flute in the orchestra. The Catalan Bovet played violin (García Alonso, interview). 8 Juan de Diego, when he was appointed to the Lagerschreibstube, was similarly allowed to ask his father to send him Catalan scores (Diego, interview). 9 When the concert was held in a Block, a fee (in cigarettes or jam) was payable to the Blockältester (García Alonso, interview). 10 Laffitte (Pendaison, 222) claims that the audience was restricted to the SS and to Prominenten when authorized to attend, while Maršálek (Geschichte, 310–11) suggests that the concerts were open to all but that the music itself, being the works of great composers, whether classical or romantic, was not suitable for the prisoner population who would have preferred light or popular music. García Alonso (interview) responds that popular music, including Spanish, was included. 11 Riquet, interview; Riquet, 293–4. 12 Ángel Hernández García (in Razola and Constante, 113) claims that it was he who thought up and arranged the bullfight. He gives no details, understandably, of how he won Bachmayer’s approval, and we can dismiss this as one more Party member’s pretentious claim. As for Bernal, he had volunteered in 1939 for the French Foreign Legion and in 1940 had been taken prisoner near Péronne (Somme), arriving in Mauthausen on 9 Sep. 1941. He was a master cobbler whose skill was such that he was rarely called upon to spend his time in repairs. The boots he made for Bachmayer won him praise. Other survivors give the date of the corrida as spring 1943, but Bernal remembers it took place before the assassination of Heydrich and the arrival of the Czechs. 13 Bernal, Diego, García Alonso, interviews. Bernal was transferred from the Hauptlager to Redl Zipf in Sep. 1943 and from there to Ebensee in Dec. 1943. 14 Indeed, a list compiled by the survivor-author José Borrás Lluch (264) gives the Spanish membership of these protected classes: 13 footballers, eight boxers, four entertainers, two musicians, one sculptor. 15 García Alonso, interview. 16 Diego, interview. 17 Luis Gil, in Razola and Constante, 54.

320 NOTES TO PP. XVI–3

8 The Revier, antechamber of death 1 Its first site was a Block outside the wall, north of Block 5. It moved in the winter of 1941–2 to Block 20, and the original site became the SS Revier. In the spring of 1942 it moved to Block 5, Stube A, while Stube B (separated from the Revier by an electrified fence) was used for Jews and the Strafkompanie. When it moved to its final position alongside the Appellplatz, the prisoner-doctors were housed in its basement. Block 20, ultimately the Death Block, served for a time as the Sonderrevier until, after various modifications, this moved to the Sanitätslager, or Russian camp, outside the fortress (Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 871, 874). 2 Pappalettera, Parola, 107. 3 Tillard, Mauthausen, 60. 4 Pappalettera, Parola, 116–17; Maršálek, Geschichte, references to Martin and Ulbrecht. This Totenbuch des SS-Standortarztamts was entrusted to US Navy Lieut. Jack H.Taylor, who handed it to the US authorities on 7 May 1945 (Pierre Serge Choumoff, in Tillion, 453; 1945, 56). 5 Constante, Yo fui, 194. His daughter, like Ziereis’ eldest son, attended the village Hochschule. Erich Neumüller, who sat beside her, remembers her as ‘blonde, plump, sexy, and conceited’ (interview). 6 Boluda was born in Madrid on 17 June 1915. 7 Diego, interview. 8 Pappalettera, Parola, 108. 9 Neumüller, interview. Aloisa is his sister. Cf. Maršálek, Geschichte, 186, 192, 203. 10 There, on 6 Aug. 1944, Krebsbach gave lethal injections to all Jewish prisoners unable to march west to escape the Soviet advance (Pappalettera, Parola, 107). 11 Entress began his SS work at Gross-Rosen, when he was only 26-years-old and straight out of medical school. He then served at Auschwitz, from 19 Dec. 1941, before moving to Mauthausen and replacing Krebsbach in June 1943. Wolter’s career, through Flossenbürg, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, Dachau, and Herzogenbusch, was considered brilliant. He replaced Entress as Standortarzt of Mauthausen on 26 July 1944 and remained there to the end. 12 ‘Ziereis parle’, Bulletin de l’Amicale de Mauthausen, 14 (Mar. 1950), et seq. Fabréguet (‘Mauthausen’, 875) identifies the substance as a mix of magnesium chlorate and cyanide. 13 Roig, ‘Generación’, 36. 14 Marceline Bilbao, in Razola and Constante, 64. 15 Cf. Bernadac, 186 marches, 48. 16 Klat was born on 16 July 1922 in Vienna. Both his parents were Czechs, but he carried Austrian citizenship at the time in 1938 when Austrians automatically became Germans. In 1940 he refused, as a Czech, to serve in the Wehrmacht, whereupon his service record book, handed to the Gestapo, was marked ‘Politically Dangerous’. In June of that year he joined a resistance group of the Austrian Communist Party, Czech section, and was arrested by the Gestapo on 5 Nov. 1941. He arrived in Mauthausen on 29 Sep. 1942, and received the registration number 13110. 17 Among them Francisco Otero, who also survived and is now living in Perpignan. 18 Josef Klat, Na Pruhonu 356, Mariánské Lázne, Usovice, Czech Republic, letter of 23 Sep. 1993. 19 Dobiáš, interview. 20 During his brief stay in Mauthausen, no fewer than 540 inmates died at his hands on the operating table. Heim’s ‘Sonderbehandlung’ (‘special treatment’) included

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 321

21

22 23

24 25

26

27 28 29

30 31

32 33

34 35

amputating the arms or legs and cutting the abdomens of healthy prisoners and then leaving his victims to die without any further treatment. Gaucher, 36; Busson, 169–70; Ellen Lentz, New York Times, 14 June 1979; Wiesenthal, 133–5. After leaving Mauthausen, Heim served as a medical officer in the 1st SS-Panzer Division on both the eastern and the western fronts. Dobiáš, interview; Maršálek, Geschichte, 182. The testimony of Tillard (Mauthausen, 59–60) though he was a survivor, contains several serious errors. Ramiro Santísteban recalls an earlier occasion when he saw Professor Podlaha, employed at that time in the Baukommando, leaving the camp in Bachmayer’s sidecar, driven by Bachmayer himself, in order to perform an urgent operation on Bachmayer’s wife, in hospital in Linz (interview). Nates, interview. The Czech Vratislav Busek, professor of law at Karl University in Prague, was assigned to the Revier as a clerk. When ordered to make up the required number for a consignment to the gas chamber, he refused to make the selection and was sentenced to be whipped (Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 967). García Barrado, interview. He adds that, at the time of the Liberation, the life of this SS-Scharführer was spared; because he had saved the lives of certain prisoners, he was given prisoner clothing to protect him. Cf. Bargueño, 168–71. García Alonso, interviews. Krebsbach received his orders to install the gas chamber from SS-Gruppenführer Glücks (Tillion, 419). The imminent arrival of the equipment for the construction of the gas chamber was disclosed to Juan de Diego by SS-Oberscharführer Josef Kirsch, a Sudeten German, who seems to have been the only SS in Mauthausen to have given secret help to the inmates (cf. Maršálek, Geschichte, 203, 308, 324). Bernadac, Jours, 285. They comprised Baldomero Chozas and two compatriots he remembers only as ‘El Chato’ and Emilio. Chozas had worked for a few days in the quarry, until his aboveaverage education—he had been admitted into the Spanish Republic’s military academy in 1938—earned him a place in the Baukommando. Chozas remembers its Kapo, Marion, as a perfect brute. Another Spaniard, Gaspar Omedes, still living in Alès in southern France, is said to have also been assigned to the construction of the gas chamber (Odette Ester, interview), but Chozas does not recognize the name and Omedes refuses to be interviewed. Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 801. Nates, interview. Juan Gil survived and became president of the FEDIP. The metal doors that the visitor now finds at Mauthausen are merely a reconstruction, and not an accurate one, since the original doors were made of wood. These were dismantled and removed at the end of the war (Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 806). Roth served as Kommandoführer of the crematorium from the beginning of May 1940 to 3 May 1945 (Tillion, 406). Pappalettera, Parola, 97, 107–8; Maršálek, Geschichte, 143. Since the gas chamber was fitted out, as elsewhere, in the exact form of a shower-room, with the gas entering through the shower-heads, victims were issued with a small towel and piece of soap, with the result that the operation was faster and more efficient. Valenzano (96) reports that on many occasions the supply of gas was not sufficient to kill all the victims in the chamber, and that some were thrown into the furnaces while still alive. It would also

322 NOTES TO PP. XVI–3

36

37 38 39

40

41 42

frequently happen that bodies en route from the Revier to the crematorium would call out from the cart transporting them that they were still alive! A young Frenchman was about to be thrown into the furnace when he recovered consciousness; the prisoners in the crematorium crew succeeded in saving him. Vilanova, 178. Cf. Roix (185) based on Climent’s records, which give the figure of 449 Spaniards gassed. Executions by shooting into the back of the neck were carried out in a tiny cell adjacent to the gas-chamber and known as the ‘portrait studio’. The prisoner was told to stand up facing the wall while his photograph was taken; through an opening in the wall opposite, an SS fired the Genickschuss. More precisely, from Schulz’s aide, SS-Hauptscharführer Krüger, who in civilian life had been a postage stamp-dealer in Constance (Bernadac, 189). Tillard, Mauthausen, 41. Nates, interview. Oddly, Antonio García does not recall being troubled by the smell; his wife, Odette Janvier, a survivor of Ravensbrück, suggests that he simply became inured to it (interviews). Diego, interview; Amat Piniella, in Roig, ‘Generación’, 37. Albert Speer was among those immune to Mauthausen’s mephitic odour. The sweet and sickening smell of burning human flesh did not spoil his visits to the camp on 31 Mar. 1943 and on 6 July 1994. On the contrary, wrote Hitler’s Minister of Armaments in his memoirs, the camp produced on him ‘an almost romantic impression’. Everything was clean and orderly. As for cachexia, he saw no evidence of it: ‘I saw no emaciated inmates. They were probably at the infamous stone quarry at the time.’ Nor were the Reichsführer-SS and his deputy any better informed than he, continues Speer, despite their visits to Mauthausen, because ‘the camp directors disguised the true situation even from Himmler and Kaltenbrunner’ (Speer, 41–2). The few SS documents to survive destruction show that Speer visited both Mauthausen and Gusen, as did Baldur von Schirach, Gauleiter of Niederdonau (Vienna), on 15 Feb. 1943 (Bernadac, Jours, 326, 341). At the Nuremberg Tribunal, Francesc Boix gave evidence that the photos taken by Ricken included one or more showing Speer in the Mauthausen quarry (Dubost, 146). Nates, interview. Vilanova, 181. Vilanova’s account of how a kitchen Kapo, to stoke up his fires, might step outside to the mound of corpses and select one which was especially thin, ‘because it burned better than one which still contained some fat, and of course better than the wood’ (ibid.) could be a fabrication. The kitchens at Mauthausen were equipped with ultramodern electric pressure-cookers that did not burn wood (Diego, interview). If, however, Vilanova meant to refer to one of Mauthausen’s Nebenlager, the account could still be accurate. Since Vilanova was not himself a former KZ inmate, it is possible that he simply confused his material. His account is certainly authentic in another context, because it is supported by an unimpeachable authority, Dr Wetter wald (48). The Kapo ‘Al Capone’ of Block 18 (one of the Spanish Blocks) would go out with an axe and cut the corpses into logs, which he would use to fuel his cooking-stove and fry his sausages. How the crematorium functioned is described in the deposition of two Polish prisoners, Ignacy Bukowski and Tadeusz Lewicki, who worked there under the crematorium Kapo, the Austrian Hans Kanduth, who had replaced Franz Suslak. ‘Tadek’ Lewicki had replaced Leon Branny, after Branny was transferred to a camp in Poland on 7 May 1942. All three escaped liquidation by being transferred. Branny

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 323

later wrote an unpublished memoir in the possession of Pierre Serge Choumoff (Tillion, 429). The deposition of Bukowski and Lewicki (in the possession of the present author) was recorded by Pierre Serge Choumoff and Jean Gavard (ibid. 429). Another surviving witness was the crematorium Schreiber Wilhelm Ornstein, who served in that capacity from 16 Aug. 1944 to 3 May 1945, when he took advantage of the order to burn the SS documents by making his escape; the SS, who that day hanged Ornstein’s co-workers, made a frantic search for him throughout the Lager but he remained hidden (‘Krematorium’, 10; Tillion, 407). Kanduth was also marked for execution on 3 May 1945 but escaped by hiding in the Revier (Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 813).

9 The quarry and the 186 steps 1 Tillard, Mauthausen, 19. 2 The analogy of the 186 steps to the Via Dolorosa trod by Jesus has occurred to others, including the designer of the stained-glass window installed in the Votivkirche in Vienna; it carries a reference to St Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians, 1:24. 3 References are sometimes made to prisoners also carrying the corpses of their fellowinmates up the steps, but this was not the normal practice. The bodies of those who died in the quarry or at the bottom of the steps were piled up in trailers and conveyed to the crematorium by the road. 4 Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 40. 5 Chance was most in evidence at the moment when the prisoners, emerging from quarantine, were given their first assignments. While almost all were sent to the quarry, some were assigned to Kommandos that were gentle in comparison. Miguel Malle (‘Empire’, 115) recalls his own good luck in being sent to the Baukommando, whose labours included the felling of trees. His compatriot in the Kommando, the stonemason Santiago Raga, taught him the secret of survival: work only when observed, and the rest of the time pretend to work. While it is true that the conservation of energy was a man’s only hope, this advice of Raga’s would be of little use in any Kommando where the Kapos were both Green and alert. 6 Diego, interview; Sebastián Mena, in Razola and Constante, 75. Cf. Delfieu, 60. 7 Not that the SS knew it, but the myth of Sisyphus carried a meaning for them, since his punishment was retribution for a crime identical to theirs: laying heaps of stones on those whom he had plundered, and allowing them to die in the most agonizing torments. 8 Charles Renaud (26) describes the fate of those who cheated. The SS forced them to attempt the impossible, carrying up a rock of 50 kg, on their knees. As their strength gave out the SS shot each one in the head. 9 Delfieu (60) who gives the weight of the rocks as between 15 and 25 kg. 10 Diego, interview. 11 Le Chêne, 70–1. 12 Wetterwald, 45. 13 Dobiáš, letter of 16 June 1994. 14 Morel, interview. 15 Vilanova, 160.

324 NOTES TO PP. XVI–3

16 Maršálek, Geschichte, 357. 17 Ibid. 287. (‘Who is responsible for our misfortune?’ ‘The Jews.’) 18 Vilanova, 170. The first convoy of Jews to enter Mauthausen arrived in April 1941; some 2000 Dutch Jews arrived in the spring of that year (Diego, interview). The last big intake of Jews was composed of Hungarians, followed by those evacuated from other camps. In the case of the Hungarian Jews, who arrived in Sep. 1944, a new camp was set up for them to the north-east of the main camp. Known as the ‘Tent Camp’, it consisted of six huge tents, plus eight of smaller size. It was closed in Dec. 1944, presumably because all were either dead or transferred to Gunskirchen. It was at that time that an Allied bomb, and perhaps more than one, landed in the area of the tent camp (Diego, interview). 19 Le Chêne, 69–70; Maršálek, ‘Mauthausen’, 11. Juan de Diego adds (interview): ‘I personally witnessed how some Dutch Jews, morally broken by their experience, said that if they had to die they would now prefer to die at once, and hurled themselves on the wire, right below the watchtower on the northern corner of the camp.’ 20 Santísteban, interview. 21 It is not entirely certain that Jo Attia witnessed the event, since Juan de Diego remembers Attia being sent to Loibl-Pass, though he is not sure on what date (interview). Prof. Dr Léon Schwarzenberg, the distinguished cancerologist and former French Minister of Health, who has heard every account of this event, discounts the version of the quartet (‘they would have been too weak, and too frightened of the revenge which the SS would take on the camp inmates afterwards’). On the other hand, collective hallucination has been recognized by medical science at least since 23 Aug. 1914, when the Angel of Mons, observed in the sky by entire units, entered the official histories of the British and French Armies.

10 Local Kommandos 1 Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 136. Seven were completed by the end of 1943, three more by the end of 1944, and the last in early 1945. 2 No writer or survivor has identified him by name, but he is variously described by the Spaniards as ‘la Niña’ and ‘la Señorita’. 3 Diego, interview; Maršálek, Geschichte, 62; Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 922, 924. De Diego noticed that on this and similar occasions Bachmayer seemed to reach a sexual climax. 4 Bargueño, interview; Razola and Constante, 47, 59, 64; Bargueño and Hernández, 90– 1. Bargueño describes his own experiences in the Donaulinde Kommando. His testimony, as a witness, is important, because not everybody in the village (Leopoldine Drexler, for example) knew of the existence of the Donaulinde Kommando. The stones, Bargueño adds, came from the camp’s quarry, not from the Poschacher quarry.

11 The Nebenlager 1 Razola and Constante, 175. 2 Ibid. 88.

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 325

3 Ibid. 46. 4 Tillion, 107. 5 Cinca, 105. Marceline López, a survivor of Gusen, recounts (interview) that the Spanish prisoners at Gusen called Chmielewski ‘el Gitano’. Told that the Spaniards at the Hauptlager used that name with reference to Bachmayer, López replied that, in that case, there must have been two. 6 Razola and Constante, 187. In comparing Seidler with Chmielewski, López stated that Seidler was ‘stricter but fairer’ (sic). ‘Seidler didn’t drink, and he was predictable in his discipline. Chmielewski was a monster’ (López, interview). 7 Heim, 22–3. 8 Le Chêne, 172. 9 Cinca (158–63) offers some interesting lists, but they contain serious errors, and his work lacks authority. SS-Scharführer Anton Kaufmann has been properly identified, and was later brought to trial (Pappalettera, Parola, 47, 187). 10 Boüard, ‘Gusen’, 49. 11 Pappalettera, Parola, 46, 187, 227. 12 Patricio Serrano et al., in Razola and Constante, 179. 13 Alfaya, 111. 14 Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 50. 15 Patricio Serrano et al., in Razola and Constante, 180. 16 Ibid. 179. 17 Jentsch had served at Auschwitz before his transfer to Gusen in Apr. 1941. In Oct. 1942 he was transferred to Herzogenbusch (Tillion, 109). 18 Cinca, 118, 121; Pappalettera, Parola, 190–1; Razola and Constante, 182; Vilanova, 177. 19 Razola and Constante, 183; Vilanova, 175. Aldebert (40) writes of Tomás that he rarely used his cudgel, preferring to use his boot. 20 Mauthausen, 50. 21 Alfaya, 112. 22 Pappalettera, Parola, 188. 23 Vilanova, 184–5; Alfaya, 111. 24 López, interview. 25 The original Gusen became known as Gusen I, but only after 9 Mar. 1944 (Tillion, 403). 26 Choumoff, interview; Martha Gammer, St Georgen an der Gusen, correspondence; Heim, 22–3. 27 Pappalettera, Parola, 187; Razola and Constante, 186–9; Vilanova, 170; Alfaya, 110– 11. 28 Martha Gammer, correspondence; Boüard, ‘Gusen’, 58. 29 Razola and Constante, 189. 30 Martha Gammer, correspondence. She adds that Gusen III was closed by the end of April 1945. 31 Maršálek, ‘Mauthausen’, 3. 32 Bernadac, Jours, 199; Razola and Constante, 83, 91; Patricio Cruz, ibid. 176. 33 Ramón Bargueño relates that, at Steyr, he was briefly appointed Blockkapo, but an act of indiscipline earned him 25 lashes and the loss of his post. On 31 Dec. 1942 he and another Spaniard caught the Kommandoführer’s cat and treated his group to a dinner (Bargueño, 101, 105, 108–9).

326 NOTES TO PP. XVI–3

34 It is extraordinary how little is known of the SS officers in command of Steyr. José Borrás Lluch, the communist author of Histoire de Mauthausen, was himself a prisoner in Steyr—his experience was apparently limited to that Kommando, where he served as an interpreter—but in his 400-page book he makes no attempt to identify the SS command, referring only to a certain Müller both as its Rapportführer (280) and its Kommandoführer (281), and mentioning no others. Chozas speaks of four Lagerführer at Steyr, of whom he knew all but the first, who was known to the Spaniards as ‘el Gitano’. His successor he describes as a decent person who would tell prisoner-clerks, when they jumped to attention, to remain seated; he was transferred back to the Hauptlager, allegedly for a relationship he had with a Jewish woman, and rumour had it that he was executed on arrival. The third Lagerführer was a standard SS brute who would nevertheless express his delight, when Chozas was working as a cook, over the quality of the cooking (‘Prima! Prima!’), and would offer Chozas a cigarette (‘Here, take two!’). The fourth and last, whose Ordenanz was a Spaniard named Juan, was also mainly interested in food; the prisoners called him ‘the commissar’ and he treated the prisoners with a certain decency, and gladly ordered up the white flag, when the time came to surrender to the Americans (Chozas, interview). 35 Chozas, interview. Chozas confirms the accounts of Razola and Constante (177) and Borrás [Lluch] (291) concerning the Spanish male nurse Juan Termens who, in the winter of 1941–2, robbed the SS Revier of medical supplies in order to treat the prisoners, especially those with frostbite; as well as the account of Steyr’s last Rapportführer catching Chozas listening to a radio and giving him no more than a reprimand and a warning. 36 Le Caër, Schlier, 91, 99, 108. 37 Razola and Constante, 129–30. 38 Constante, Años, 145. 39 Schröck, 35, who also points out the contradiction above. 40 Roig, Noche, 247. 41 César was among the Spaniards who stayed in Austria after the war, and at a congress in Linz he was chosen to head their association (Schröck, 35). 42 Comellas, interview. 43 Mauthausen, 56. It was at Loibl-Pass that Louis Brieux, a captured member of the French Resistance, served as a Kapo and won such a reputation for cruelty to his fellow-prisoners that in 1947 he was sentenced to death by a French court and hanged (Pappalettera, Parola, 14, 51). 44 Gino Valenzano (interview) reports that Schwechat, which opened on 30 Aug. 1943, was destroyed by Allied air attack on 20 Mar. 1944 and that he and other prisoners were transferred to Melk. The Heinkel factory at Schwechat was nevertheless repaired before it was finally abandoned four months later. 45 Bachmayer’s first contingent consisted of 20 prisoners, all of them Spaniards. Bachmayer also brought Hans Killermann, whose reputation in the Bunker at Mauthausen and as Arbeitsdienstführer at Gusen had won him promotion to Rapportführer at Schlier. He was now known to the Spaniards as ‘Fernandel’ or ‘the Grin’. What made him grin most was his practice—he boasted of ‘holding the patent’— of placing matchsticks in the eyes of the prisoners so that they could not close them or even blink in the sunlight. The Kommando was officially opened on 11 Oct. 1943. Once a week, a truck arrived from Mauthausen with provisions, and since Schlier lacked an incinerator it returned with the corpses for incineration in the Mutterlager.

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 327

46

47

48

49

50

51 52 53 54 55 56

57 58 59

It is possible that other bodies lie forever buried in the cement, into which they fell or were pushed. Schlier remained to the end of special significance to Spaniards: there were more Spaniards there at the time of evacuation in May 1945 than all other nationalities combined (Le Caër, Schlier, 8–60, passim, 197). It was at that moment, in late 1943, with the departure of Keller from Mauthausen, that his post of Lagerältester I passed to Josef Schöps, who since autumn 1941 had served as Lagerältester of the quarantine camp (Blocks 16–19) (Tillion, 439). The first of these was totally deranged (Le Chêne, 224). The second, SSHauptsturmführer Otto Riemer, was removed after a celebrated incident. On the evening of 23 May 1944, Riemer, while drunk, mounted a horse, seized a submachine-gun, and led a hunting party in pursuit of any prisoner found in the open. The party killed six, while 12 more were brought, in grave condition, to the Revier, where they were treated by the French surgeons Wetterwald and Quenouille. While there was nothing unusual about the killings, word of a manhunting party leaked out to the villagers of Ebensee, a serious matter indeed (Wetterwald, 84–5; Laffitte, Ceux, 290–1; Le Chêne, 228; Maršálek, Geschichte, 232, 251; Pappalettera—who spell his name Reimer, confusing Otto Riemer with Guido Reimer—Parola, 135, 137–9, 230). Le Chêne (231) describes Ganz as a former night-club bouncer, and others have called him semi-literate, but the description given by the French surgeon Dr Wetterwald, working at Ebensee, must take priority, however much it is at variance: ‘He was small, slim, elegant in his high boots, and spent much of his time fondling a ridiculously small lapdog’ (Wetterwald, 103). Renaud (130) refers to him as ‘Gango’, perhaps a nickname given to him by the Spaniards. To complete the mix of metaphors associated with Ganz, Jean Laffitte refers to him as a tiger who would creep up on his victim the better to surprise him (Bulletin de l’Amicale de Mauthausen, 164, Jan. 1973). Vilanova (136) selects Ganz and Chmielewski as the worst of all the camp commandants in Austria. Ganz is wrongly remembered for the incident of the Italian boy Veronesi (see below). Gouffault, 35. Karl was made Oberkapo of Ebensee’s Revier. Paul Tillard writes that Karl was allowed to keep one gold tooth in every ten he extracted—his tithe! Tillard’s groans during his stay in the Revier kept Karl awake, or interrupted his naps. He clearly wanted to strangle Tillard, but Tillard was protected by friends: every time in the night that Karl approached his bed, his friends in the Revier, who took turns staying awake, emerged from the shadows (Tillard, Pain, 90–1). Drahomir Barta, diary (private correspondence). Freund, Arbeitslager, 111, which reproduces the corresponding SS chart. Le Chêne, 224. Wetterwald, 115–16. Cf. Tillion, 429, who states that Suslak was shot in Apr. 1945. Laffitte, Ceux, 269. Gouffault, 31. Gouffault also describes how one night in the winter of 1944–5, when the detail set out for the overnight shift in the tunnels, Ganz ordered the sick to be rounded up, then made them stamp down the snow in their bare feet, and finally forced them to run in a circle until they dropped. Ibid. 20–2. Mauthausen, 59–61; Pappalettera, Parola, 230; Gouffault, 6–16, 20–2, 25–40. Le Chêne, 243. The code name given to Nebenlager Melk was Quarz, this being the name of the local firm that hired the slave labour. Quarz G.m.b.H. had its

328 NOTES TO PP. XVI–3

headquarters in nearby Loosdorf, and the construction project was under the supervision of Dr Ing. Hans Kammler, who held the very high SS rank of Obergruppenführer. A subsidary project in nearby Roggendorf was under the direction of SS-Obersturmführer Schulz. 60 Mauthausen, 58. Renaud (42) writes that 5000 prisoners were sent from Mauthausen Mutterlager to build one such underground factory at Melk; within a few months this number had been almost entirely used up, but the Mutterlager’s inexhaustible stock continued to replenish Melk’s losses with a new supply every fortnight. Exhausted prisoners would be returned to the Hauptlager for extermination.

12 Schloss Hartheim and the mobile gas chamber 1 Le Chêne, 104. 2 But not entirely: some of the buildings standing today within 400 metres of the château were built before the war. 3 Le Chêne, 106. 4 Lonauer’s deputy director was Dr Georg Renno and his chief of administration SSObersturmführer Christian Wirth, who was reassigned in Nov. 1940 and his place taken by SS-Obersturmführer Franz Paul Stangl; Stangl, who was also Austrian, remained at Hartheim until Oct. 1941, after which he served as Lagerführer of Sobibor (Mar.–Sep. 1942) and of Treblinka (Sep. 1942–Aug. 1943). It was while Wirth was at Hartheim that gas was first used to kill the victims, their death agony being precisely timed and photographed, and the reports and prints sent to Berlin (Maršálek, Geschichte, 212, 215; Wiesenthal, 96). When Wirth left Hartheim, he was given command of the extermination centre at Hadamar near Limburg. The extermination programme at these centres was part of the operation code-named 14 F 13. 5 Juan de Diego, letter to Herr Ohren, Public Prosecutor, Cologne Magistrates’ Court: Luchon, 21 Dec. 1962. 6 Alfaya, 110. 7 Two Spaniards, Miguel Justo and Mauricio Pacheco, were among those ordered to brick up the door of the gas chamber (Tillion, 398). They escaped death by feigning it. Pacheco gave an account of his experience during the 40th anniversary celebration of the liberation of Mauthausen. 8 Le Chêne, 106; Billig, 121–3; Mauthausen, 62. In the reconstruction of Hartheim into a school, there was space in 1945 for 400 children (International Tracing Service, Catalogue, 31). Despite the Nazis’ attempt to destroy all the evidence, the Allies found the remains of the experimental laboratories and of the crematoria, while a group of Poles, employed in the subsequent excavations, unearthed, in 26 tons of human ash, the identifiable remains of womens’ and childrens’ clothing (Gaucher, 36; Busson, 179). 9 Rauff had served as a regular navy officer from 1924 to 1937, when his friend Heydrich invited him to join the RSHA. In 1941–2, when his work brought him to Mauthausen, he served as head of Amt II-D, the section responsible for organizing the SS Einsatzgruppen, or extermination Kommandos, and for fitting them out with the best possible equipment. After leaving this post, Rauff served as Gestapo chief in

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 329

10

11

12 13

14 15 16

Tunisia, and then in Rome. After the Italian surrender Rauff became head of the SipoSD in German-occupied Italy, using Milan as his base. There are several witnesses to this, including Bohumil Bardon, from MährischOsttfrau (Josef Klat, deposition); Dr Vratislav Busek, then working as Krankenlagerschreiber; Frantisek Poprawka, at that time Zentralschreiber in the Sonderrevier; and Lieutenant Jack H.Taylor, US Navy (Pierre Serge Choumoff, in Tillion, 396, 446, 449). Taylor was interned in Mauthausen only from Apr. 1945, when he was employed in the installation of the second crematorium which was completed in that month. After the Liberation he made his own investigation, and concluded that a police truck had been converted for this purpose and put to use between March and Oct. 1943. This special clinic was designed for outbreaks of epidemic, but was used mainly to exterminate the sick. Its final location was the building next to the Bunker, now the camp museum. A.Tiefenbacher to Pierre Serge Choumoff, in Tillion, 447. At his trial in Cologne on 5 Jan. 1962, SS-Hauptscharführer Johann Haider, who was responsible for Mauthausen’s archives, admitted that the word ‘gas’ was never entered and that even the word ‘execution’ was banned, ‘special treatment’ being the term used in the dossiers of the Politische Abteilung (Pierre Serge Choumoff, in Tillion, 456). Josef Klat, deposition. Diego, interview; Pappalettera, Parola, 104; Vilanova, 179; Le Chêne, 80–2; Billig, 122. Rauff’s ‘Black Ravens’, which he first described, in a letter dated 26 Mar. 1942 as a ‘special vehicle’ (Tillion, 441), required 20 minutes to kill 50 prisoners. Even so, Rauff could report on 5 July 1942 that, counting all camps in which his invention had been used since its introduction in Dec. 1941, ‘97 000 [had] been processed’. US Army Intelligence reported Ziereis as saying on his death-bed that Rauff’s vehicle was used only three times at Mauthausen because it was ‘too dangerous for the SS guards escorting it’ (Turner, 38).

13 Escape and the SS response 1 Maršálek, Geschichte, 253. This supports Vilanova (112) who states that all in all, 17 Spaniards escaped from Mauthausen, but seven of them died in the process. 2 Diego, interview. 3 ‘J’attendrai, le jour et la nuit, j’attendrai toujours, ton retour…’ 4 Tillion, 456. 5 Horwitz, 133–4. 6 The front row of the group, as shown in the well-known photographs, consisted of two violinists and two accordionists, these last two being German: the taller one the green-triangle kitchen Kapo Kurt, and the shorter one the pink-triangle Heikmann. The second row comprised three violinists and one guitarist, all black-triangle gypsies. The third row consisted of a gypsy on mandolin, and a Spaniard, Antonio Terres (‘Músico’), on clarinet (Laffitte, Pendaison, 193). Laffitte, who does not document his book, no doubt drew his information from Terres. Terres, who arrived in Mauthausen in the first batch of Spaniards, on 6 Aug. 1940, survived and ended his life as a café owner in Ivry, a suburb of Paris. Laffitte identifies the celebrated drum-major, in

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7 8 9 10

11

12

13

14

15 16 17

error, as a certain Schulz, a German working in the kitchen Kommando who was once a clown and was now an informer. These lines are derived from Goethe: Willst du immer weiter schweifen? Sieh’, das Gute liegt so nah. Vilanova, 176–7; Maršálek, Geschichte, 251. Cf. Maršálek, Geschichte, 316. Schröck (40), who has unearthed the SS report on the escape. The names of the Spaniards are barely legible, but the date given for the escape (5 Aug. 1941) corrects that given by the survivor Velasco (23 July 1941). Vilanova, 113; Laffitte, Pendaison, 63–73. Antonio Velasco, Hispania, vol. 4, no. 14, Dec. 1993–Jan. 1994; no. 15, Mar.–Apr. 1994; no. 16, Oct.–Nov. 1994; no. 17, Jan.– Feb. 1995; no. 18, Apr.–May 1995; no. 19, June–July 1995; no. 20, Dec. 1995–Jan. 1996. Schröck (40), who gives the name of the three Spaniards, presumably drawn from an SS document, as: Juan Adelantado Andreu, from Barcelona; Francisco López Bermúdez, from Aracena; and Agustín Santos Fernández, from El Gordo. Cf. Vilanova, 113. It was Adelantado who succeeded in crossing into Slovenia. The Bretstein Kommando having completed its mission, the camp was closed in Oct. 1942, at which time the prisoners were transferred to Steyr (Émile Témime, private information). Schröck (40) who gives the names of the three Spaniards, again presumably drawn from an SS document, as: Constantino Bernat Carbo, Joaquín Gelis Ribo, and José Martínez Carpio. Cf. Borrás [Lluch], who reports (from his experience in Steyr) that Martínez Carpio never succeeded in breaking out: he was beaten to death on that same day by the Kapo ‘el Chato’ for having stolen his snack. Though Austrian, Bonarewitz was of Polish origin, but he was known to his fellowprisoners as Hans Bremen, or Hans of Bremen (García Alonso, interview; Laffitte, Pendaison, 118). García Alonso, interview; Laffitte, Pendaison, 122. Francesc Boix, evidence given at the Nuremberg Tribunal (Dubost, 143). García Alonso, interviews; Juan de Diego, deposition signed in Paris on 5 Dec. 1978, and counter-signed by four leading officials of the Amicale de Mauthausen. Diego affirms that he saw the photographs being taken by an SS NCO attached to the Erkennungsdienst, and that four Spaniards (three of whom survived) are identifiable in the photos which were saved. Cf. Laffitte (Pendaison, 309) who quotes the rather vague recollection of Juan de Diego of Hans’ last words. Could de Diego, in the front row, have heard more than García, in the tenth row? ‘Not really,’ replied García to the question. ‘We were both outside Block 1, about 20 metres from the scaffold, and there was total silence.’ Cf. Constante, Yo fui, 162–8; Borrás [Lluch], 202–3. A book published in the Federal Republic of Germany by a certain Udo Walendy is noteworthy only for its crude attempt to deny the reality of the SS camps, in particular the photographic evidence of the hanging of Bonarewitz. Walendy goes to great effort to show that the photos are merely paintings photographically reproduced. Mauthausen, no. 194, Jan. 1979, took the trouble to demolish the claims of Walendy, whose lack of seriousness and nostalgia for the Nazi era hardly deserved a rejoinder.

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 331

PART III: SURVIVAL * Brothers stick together— That is eternal law: Their bonds hold fast Whatever may befall, Because if ever they fall to discord They will end in the outsider’s maw. Martín Fierro (author’s translation)

1 The nucleus of a resistance 1 García Barrado, interview. 2 Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 68; cf. Artur London, in Razola and Constante, 123. Razola and Constante (127) consider this situation to have continued until spring 1944. 3 Razola and Constante, 87, 121; Rubio, Guerra civil, 409 n. The date, one day before the German attack, is just possibly contrived. Juan de Diego warns against the ideological bias of Razola and his co-author. 4 The committee was composed of Manuel Razola, José Perlado, Santiago Bonaque, Mariano Constante, and Manuel Bonet, all of the PCE, with Joan Pagès representing the PSUC. Santiago Raga was added to the committee in 1942 (Razola and Constante, 87; Vilanova, 204). After the Liberation, Pagès returned to his native Barcelona and became president of the Amical de Mauthausen in Spain. As head of the PSUC he was arrested in 1951 and given a long prison sentence. From his release to his death in 1978 he remained in active opposition to the Franco regime (Miguel Malle, correspondence). 5 Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 68; Artur London, in Razola and Constante, 122–3. 6 Vilanova, 197. 7 Razola and Constante, 149. 8 Vilanova, 206. 9 Luis Gil, in Razola and Constante, 80. The valuta, or exchange rate, was: one slice of bread for 30 to 50 cigarettes; a dead cat, 20 cigarettes; a small dead dog, 30 cigarettes; a portion of beet soup, five or six cigarettes; a belt, three cigarettes; a slice of sausage, one or two cigarettes (Maršálek, Geschichte, 363). 10 Fabréguet shows that one in every five of the Spaniards was an artisan by profession (‘Groupe’, 38). 11 Razola and Constante, 133; Vilanova, 196. 12 Razola, who was to become the senior political leader of the Spaniards in Mauthausen, had previously worked for a number of years in the quarry (Constante, Yo fui, 79), presumably as a machinist or a mason. 13 Esteban Balogh, in Razola and Constante, 139; Constante, Yo fui, 74, 152. 14 Diego, interview. 15 García Alonso, interview. 16 Constante, Yo fui, 144, 206. 17 García Barrado, interview. 18 García Alonso, interview; Constante, Yo fui, 47; Laffitte, Pendaison, 56–8.

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19 20 21 22 23

Razola and Constante, 57–8. García Barrado, interview. Vilanova, 196. Constante, Yo fui, 108. Willy Weber was a notorious pederast who used his influential position to secure good posts for his lovers in the work Kommandos (Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 857). It is curious that Constante, who has so much to say about everything at Mauthausen, and who admits in his Les Années rouges that he was shocked on his arrival by the homosexual advances he witnessed, has nothing to say about Weber’s sexual proclivities. 24 For Constante’s fabricated account of his experiences as Klosettreiniger, see Pike, Service, 238–9.

2 A Spaniard enters the Central Administration Office 1 This did not mean that only 3155 prisoners had preceded him, as Juan de Diego himself quickly discovered in his new job. The names of prisoners were entered in the register in pencil. When a prisoner died, his name was erased and replaced by that of the new holder of the number. Thus in the early years the total prisoner population did not officially exceed 3000. The purpose was to conceal the truth (Macdonald, 301). 2 Maršálek, Geschichte, 60. 3 He became Kapo of the Bahnhof-Kommando (Schröck, 33), which gave him an exceptional opportunity to make contact with the local Resistance, but there is no evidence that he took it. 4 Karl Weber was merely a swindler; he was a good type, and spoke good French. Laffitte (Pendaison, 301–2) writes that he was decent to those below him but terrified of those above him. 5 Diego to Madelyn Most, interview. 6 Karl Weber was appointed Lagerschreiber at Loibl Pass on 2 June 1943 (Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 922). Fabréguet, (ibid. 926) suggests that Pany could have taken up his post much earlier, on 17 Mar. 1942. 7 Le Chêne, 67. 8 Bernadac, 210. 9 Diego, interview. 10 As Gauleiter of Oberdonau, Eigruber was higher in status than the average Gauleiter, no doubt because his bailiwick included the Führer’s birthplace. As Reichsstatthalter, he answered directly to Himmler and Hitler, and he held the SS rank of Obergruppenführer, the same as Heydrich (Tillion, 387). 11 Diego, interview. 12 Pappalettera, Parola, 151. 13 The account of what Ziereis actually said is itself open to question; see below, p. 378, n. 59. The figure of three per cent is incongruous: we have seen that until 1944 Himmler railed against the high mortality rates at Mauthausen, which prevented KL-M from reaching the population he wanted it to have (see above, p. 20). 14 Chozas, interview.

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 333

15 Diego, interview. 16 Le Chêne, 207. Cf. Wormser-Migot, (288) and Fabréguet (‘Mauthausen’, 525–30) for other SS interest in Neolithic remains. 17 Vilanova, 84 n. 18 Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 918. 19 Cf. Maršálek, Geschichte, 163–4. 20 Cf. ibid. 55. The decision, apparently on the initiative of the Wilhelmstrasse, was taken on 15 Jan. 1943, but it was not implemented until the second half of 1943 (Favez, 125). 21 An exception was made in the case of Stalingrad: the surrender of Paulus was announced, as was the declaration of three days of national mourning. In the course of the long and decisive battle, SS men were overheard making secret bets on German victory or defeat (Diego, interview). 22 Diego, García Alonso, interviews. Diego still holds the two letters he wrote. Other survivors report that their letters were never mailed, and were handed back to them weeks later at the precise moment they had been told that mail from home would be distributed. The Nazis thus kept their promise. 23 Favez, 174, 176. 24 Migot-Wormser (143) refers to an Austrian prince working for the CIRC whom she calls simply ‘S’. He succeeded in getting packages delivered to Buchenwald and Dachau but never to Mauthausen. 25 Diego, interview. 26 Ibid.

3 A Spaniard enters the photo lab 1 In Linz, the Gestapo headquarters were at Langgasse 13. 2 Nothing remains today of the Erkennungsdienst, nor for that matter of the Politische Abteilung. Even the concrete bases of these Blocks were demolished and ploughed under, either by the Soviet authorities or by the Austrian Government. 3 Persico, 238. 4 García Alonso, interviews and correspondence. 5 Bargueño’s book, badly written as it is, could not have been written at all without the help of the co-author, the Spanish journalist Pedro Hernández. 6 See Bargueño and Hernández (154–5) where he says his friend Francesc Boix entered the prison to hand him the packet of photographs. 7 Bargueño, interview; Bargueño and Hernández, 145–6.

4 Franco’s consulate in Vienna 1 The correspondence available gives the following information on Spanish diplomatic personnel. At the Spanish Embassy in Berlin, at Kurfürstendam 180: Ambassadors, Espinosa de les Monteros (1940–1), Conde de Mayalde (1941–2), Ginés Vidal (November 1942–5); Counsellor, Alonso Caro. At the Spanish Consulate General, at Lichtensteinallee 1: Consuls, D.Carreño (1940–1), F.de Sotomayor (1942), J.Salcher

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2

3

4 5

6 7 8

9

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12 13 14

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(1944–5). At the Spanish Consulate in Vienna, at Argentinierstrasse 34: Chancellor, Pecker Cardona; Consuls, R.de la Presilla (1941), J.Schwarz (1942–3), F.Oliván (1944). At the Spanish Consulate in Munich, at Bad Wiessee: R.de la Presilla (1942–); in Hamburg: F.G.Ontiveros (1941), A.Diaz de Tuesta (1943); in Strasbourg: E. S.de Erice; in Pau: J.M.Cavanillas. While almost all the Spanish Consulate’s correspondence was with the SS, it also serves to identify certain local Nazi officials: Dr Walter Kreindl, Amtsgerichtsrat for the Mauthausen municipality, and Otto Lengsteiner and Josef Enzenhofer, each a Justizinspektor. Guillermo Pecker Cardona, Consul, Spanish Consulate, Vienna, no. 293, 18 June 1941, to Kommandantur, KL-Mauthausen. Bundesarchiv, Berlin, 1169/ 98/4 NS/4 Ma/vorl. 49. Krüger, SS-Oberscharführer, Verwaltung des Krematorium KLM, Mauthausen, 22 Apr. 1942; entered no. 187, 25 Apr. 1942, Spanish Consulate, Vienna. An example of this: Kopkow, Reichssicherheitshauptamt, Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8, Berlin SW11, IV A 2 b B. no. 3037/40, 4 Apr. 1941, to Spanish Consulate, Vienna; in reply to Spanish Consulate, Vienna, no. 50, 7 Feb. 1941. Bundesarchiv, Berlin, 1169/98/4 NS/4 Ma/vorl. 49. ‘Resumen Audición de los días 14 y 15 de septiembre de 1962 ante el juez de la Instancia de Colonia (proceso Schulz)’, 1. A copy of the letter is in the author’s possession. Blauensteiner, Kriminaloberassistant, i.V. Lagerkommandant KLM/Gu., 23 May 1941, to Spanish Consulate, Vienna; in reply to Spanish Consulate, Vienna, no. 104, 4 Mar. 1941. Bundesarchiv, Berlin, 1169/98/4 NS/4 Ma/vorl. 50. Der Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8, Berlin SW11, IV A 2 b-B. NR. 1487/42-IV A 2, 20 Mar. 1942, to Spanish Consulate, Vienna; in reply to Spanish Consulate, Vienna, no. 136, 25 Feb. 1942. Bundesarchiv, Berlin, 1169/98/4 NS/4 Ma/vorl. 50. SS-Obersturmführer (illegible), Der Leiter der Verwaltung des KL-Mauthausen, Konzentrationslager Mauthausen/Gusen, Gefangenen-Eigentumsverwaltung, Gu. Az. 14/4w-e-8.42/Re., Gusen, 7 Aug. 1942, to Spanish Consulate, Vienna. Bundesarchiv, Berlin, 1169/98/4 NS/4 Ma/vorl. 49. Guillermo Pecker Cardona, Consul, Spanish Consulate, Vienna, 20 Jan. 1943, to Juana Fajardo Cortés, Gutiérrez de los Ríos 17, Cordoba. Bundesarchiv, Berlin, 1169/ 98/4 NS/4 Ma/vorl. 51. Landgerichtspräsident, Linz, 91 E-100/43, 29 Jan. 1943, to Spanish Consulate, Vienna. Bundesarchiv, Berlin, 1169/98/4 NS/4 Ma/vorl. 50. Bundesarchiv, Berlin, ibid. Ginés Vidal, Spanish Embassy, Berlin, citing Ministerio de Negocies Extranjeros, 26 Oct. 1943; to Spanish Consulate, Vienna. Bundesarchiv, Berlin, 1169/98/4 NS/4 Ma/ vorl. 51. SS-Untersturmführer Eisenhöfer, Der Gef. Eigentumsverwalter des KLM, Waffen-SS, KL-Mauthausen, Ma. Az. 14/4e-1/44/Ei, 27 Jan. 1944; in reply to Spanish Consulate, Vienna, of 22 Dec. 1943. Bundesarchiv, Berlin, 1169/98/4 NS/4 Ma/vorl. 50. Standesamt Mauthausen II, 4 Aug. 1944. Bundesarchiv, Berlin, 1169/98/4 NS/4Ma/ vorl. 51. Federico Oliván, Consul, Spanish Consulate in Vienna, no. 527, 9 Aug. 1944; to Kommandantur, KL-Mauthausen. Bundesarchiv, Berlin, 1169/98/4 NS/4 Ma/vorl.

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 335

49. Oliván comes across as a man of conscience. While serving in the Spanish Embassy in Berlin, he wrote to Madrid on 22 July 1943 regarding the moral duty facing Spain to protect the Jews (cf. Joseph Pérez, L’Histoire (Paris), no. 216, 52–6). 18 Guillermo Pecker Cardona, Chancellor, Spanish Consulate, Ebenzweier 17, Altmünster O.D., no. 652, 2 Oct. 1944; no. 658, n.d. Bundesarchiv, Berlin, 1169/98/ 4 NS/4 Ma/vorl. 50.

5 A marriage at Auschwitz 1 Édouard Friemel, interview. Margarita Ferrer Suárez died in Paris on Christmas Eve, 1987. Édouard Friemel became a professor of psychology at the University of Paris VIII.

6 Holy night 1 Tillard, Pain, 28. 2 Bernadac, Jours, 115. 3 Tillard, Pain, 27–8; Bernadac, Jours, 261–2, citing the testimony of Dr Wetterwald in Jan. 1974. 4 Tillard, Pain, 29–35. 5 Rousset, interview; Bernal, interview. 6 According to Drahomir Barta’s diary of 14 May 1944, Danielo (sic) Veronesi was born on 7 May 1926 and was given the registration number 57467. According to Danilo (sic) Veronesi’s brother Leo, he was born on 3 July 1926. 7 Inexplicably, even 45 years later, Freund chose to protect the identity of this witness (Arbeitslager, 356), but perhaps it was his Italian source who withheld it. The same omission is found in the case of the German green-triangle Paul M. who often served as the camp hangman. 8 The dog was apparently Bachmayer’s; he had brought it from Mauthausen and left it with the Lagerleiter (Freund, 354). 9 Drahomir Barta, diary; information provided by Leo Veronesi, brother of Danilo, Caprino Veronese, to Drahomir Barta, Mariánské Lázné; Freund, Arbeitslager, 354–6. 10 Bernadac, Jours, 361, which presents the SS document in translation.

7 A visit to Melk 1 Langbein, La Résistance, 456. 2 At least one bomb dropped on the Hauptlager, in 1945, but it (or they) landed outside the fortress, on the tent camp to the north (Diego, interview). 3 Bernadac, Jours, 350. Bachmayer presumably considered Floridsdorf too far distant for the mission he later gave to de Diego. 4 Rauchensteiner, 33, 43, 50, 65, 66. 5 MacDonald, 305.

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6 Diego, interviews.

8 An international committee forms 1 Razola and Constante, 96. 2 Vilanova, 203; Alfaya, 117. Cf. Mauthausen; Bulletin, no. 270, March 1997. Felipe Martínez may have received more credit than he deserved; see the testimony of Italo Tibaldi, below, p. 167. 3 In France, Ester had joined Paco Ponzán in the small group that rallied to Britain and de Gaulle from the very beginning of the Occupation. Montero, a former CGT leader in Spain, is said to have organized communist shock troops against the Germans in the Paris area. Both arrived in Mauthausen in the Nacht und Nebel category (Constante, Yo fui, 215). 4 On 17 Nov. 1944 this Nebenlager north-west of Vienna was attacked by Allied aircraft and Miret was wounded; the SS guards finished him off. 5 Razola and Constante, 151. Their anonymous source is Miguel Malle (see below), who adds (‘Maquis’, 5) that Luis Montero ‘represented the Spanish FTP within the French Conseil National de la Résistance’. Malle is probably confusing Luis Montero with Juan Montero (‘Dominguez’ in the Resistance in France), who was indeed arrested and sent to Mauthausen, but was probably transferred to a Nebenlager. Malle’s widow Dr Denise Malle-Dupuy writes that in the Mutterlager the only Montero that anyone knew was Luis (private correspondence). Besides, the Spanish guerrilleros in France never referred to themselves as the Spanish FTP, and no author has ever suggested that Luis Montero ever participated in the CNR or represented the Spanish Resistance anywhere. 6 Ibid. 126; Rubio, Guerra civil, 409 n. Angel Sánchez worked as an interpreter (El Nuevo Diario, 30 Nov. 1969). 7 A former communist member of the Reichstag and the former assistant to Dimitrov, Dahlem had taken refuge in France. After fighting in the Spanish Civil War he was interned in 1939 in Le Vernet, and after June 1940 the Vichy authorities handed him over to the Gestapo. After the war, he became Minister of Education in the German Democratic Republic. 8 Rau was political commissar of the XIth International Brigade. Semprún is the grandson of the Duke of Maura, whose domain is Majorca. 9 Diego, interview. 10 Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 68–71; Alfaya, 117. Both Artur London (in Razola and Constante, 124) and Vilanova (204) give the Austrian Leo Gabler as the leader; neither mentions Mayer, and Vilanova puts Razola in the committee from the beginning, which is not the case in Razola and Constante’s own account. 11 London was not recognized either as Gérard or as Singer, but as a foreign suspect he was imprisoned and deported anyway (interview). 12 Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 68; Artur London, in Razola and Constante, 117. 13 The ever-faithful Stalinist Maršálek took his revenge on Artur London by producing his Mauthausen mahnt! in 1950 without even mentioning London’s membership in the international committee, as Fabréguet (‘Mauthausen’, 26) aptly points out. 14 Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 71.

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 337

15 Istvan Balogh, ‘La radio au service de l’organisation internationale’, Bulletin de l’Amicale de Mauthausen, 123 (June 1965); Esteban Balogh, in Razola and Constante, 137–9. The suspicion in which the Spanish communists held Steininger may have been unjustified and even spurious. It was, after all, to Steininger that Hans Kanduth went when the crematorium Kapo hit upon the idea of adapting the wireless of his Kommandoführer, Martin Roth, so that it could pick up foreign channels. Steininger succeeded, and Kanduth was able to pick up Allied broadcasts, until one day Roth switched on, tuned the set, and found a foreign channel. Suspecting nothing, Roth told Kanduth that the wireless was out of order. Kanduth replied that he would take it in to Steininger. Steininger ‘repaired’ it, but also constructed a tiny amplifier which could be inserted into a device he added to the back of the wireless. The device, no bigger than a matchbox, could be hidden when not in use in a crevice in the crematorium. But Steininger was betrayed to the SS: on 3 Nov. 1944 they found listening devices hidden in his bed and marched him to the Klagemauer. Fearing what he might divulge under torture, the secret organization made contact with him and persuaded him to commit suicide (‘Témoignages de Ignacy Bukowski et Tadeusz Lewicki’, 6–7). Wilhelm Ornstein also reports listening on Roth’s wireless to broadcasts from London and Bari (‘Krematorium’, 2). In Gusen, the work of monitoring Allied broadcasts was performed by the mathematician and engineer Serge Choumoff, similarly employed in that camp’s electrical workshop. 16 Pierre Daix arrived in Mauthausen on 26 Mar. 1944. He had been arrested in Paris on 21 Apr. 1941 while entrusted by the French Communist Party with recruiting students into the Resistance. He was sent first to the German-held section of La Santé prison and then to the ‘Dépôt’, the underground dungeons of the Conciergerie. In Mauthausen, after his initial assignment to the quarry, his proficiency in languages (he spoke five, including German) won him the post of Hilfsschreiber in the Aufnahme Kommando, which was responsible, both to the Politische Abteilung and to the Lagerschreibstube, for issuing the prisoner registration numbers. Although a Prominenter, he slept in Block 13, which was mainly Spanish and French, with Fernández Lavín being its Stubendiener. 17 The committee consisted of Boüard, Georges Savourey, Dr Fichez, and Jean Guillon (Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 71). 18 Ibid. The stolen medicine alone saved the life of Santiago Bonaque. 19 Gabler was given the mission, while in an Aussenkommando, of making contact with the Austrian Resistance. He actually succeeded in escaping from the camp, but was caught and guillotined in Vienna (Diego, interview; Vilanova, 204). Cf. Artur London, in Razola and Constante, 125. 20 According to Razola and Constante (129), these included the Spanish doctor Pedro Freixa. 21 The Italians were later represented directly on the international committee by Francesco Albertini, who after the war became a Minister and Vice President of the Italian Senate. 22 Razola and Constante, 128; Vilanova, 204; Alfaya, 118. 23 Diego, interview. Only Vilanova (204) refers to it; he adds that its other leaders were the anarchist Prat, the socialist Antonio, and the republican Calmarza— none of them of any political significance.

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9 Atrocities against Allied prisoners 1 García Alonso, interview, who thus identified the tall man to the left in the second row, behind the short man looking down; Pike, Service, 202B. 2 Gerard (Jerry) van Hemert was born in the United States to Dutch immigrants and thus held US citizenship, but as a patriotic Dutchman he left for England and enlisted in SOE. He was captured in Holland. 3 The Dutch had been held since the catastrophic failure of the ‘North Pole’ intelligence mission in Dec. 1941; the British, since the successful raid on Saint-Nazaire in Mar. 1942. They arrived in Mauthausen from the forced labour camp in Rawicz (Henny Dominicus to Gordon Adams, letter of 18 July 1996; Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 891). Dr Karl Helferich, who gave evidence to the Special Investigator (unidentified) of the US War Crimes Branch, reported that the 47 Allied prisoners arrived on the morning of 5 Sep. and without being registered were sent straight to the Bunker, and that the registration and the witnessed atrocities began the following morning (Pappalettera, Parola, 144–5). 4 It has been said that at least some of the 47 were wearing military uniform. This is very unlikely (Adams, letter of 22 Sep. 1997), and Helferich states that they were wearing civilian clothes (Pappalettera, Parola, 145). 5 In a two-page deposition submitted to the US military authorities, given in German and written up by Přemysl Dobiáš, Juan de Diego lists only the following five SS as having taken part in this stage of the atrocity: Ziereis, Altfuldisch, Zoller, Wickenhäuser and Haider (Diego, archives). 6 Pappalettera, Parola, 144–5. 7 This explains the strange omission, in Bargueño’s memoirs, of any reference to the 47 Allied agents. When questioned on this, he admitted that he and Chacón were removed from the Bunker on certain occasions. Bargueño’s claim that Juan de Diego never set foot inside the Bunker (Bargueño, interview) fails to take into account the special circumstances in this case. 8 Drexel had belonged to a national-communist group in Nuremberg which produced the review Widerstand. Kept under observation by the Gestapo, he was among those who had recently been arrested and interned as a result of the Bomb Plot of 20 July 1944. He had arrived at Mauthausen a few days earlier with the indication RU (Rückkehr unerwünscht), but instead of being executed he had been kept, for some reason, in the Bunker. 9 Diego, interview; England Spiel, videofilm. 10 Drexel, 128–30. Niermeijer died, according to the registry, on 6 Sep., but it is known that he was still alive on the night of 6–7 Sep. He must have died that night from the beating he had received from Niedermayer. 11 Diego, interview; Pappalettera, Parola, 144–7; transcript in German of the sworn testimony of Juan de Diego Herranz given to US authorities on 17 May 1945, in Le Chêne, 122–3; Juan de Diego, Hispania, 51 (May 1975), 7–8; Wiesenthal, Justice, 321; cf. the testimony of Gerhard Kanthack (in Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 891–2) for some details that differ. The SS could not be faulted in the care they took to destroy the evidence. The two prisoners in the crematorium Kommando who survived report that the bodies of Allied officers could be burnt only at night. They included the Soviet

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 339

General Boms Dworkin, and a number of USAAF officers who had been shot down in raids on Linz and Steyr (‘Temoignages de Ignacy Bukowski et Tadeusz Lewicki’, 4, 6). Cf. Wilhelm Ornstein’s report ‘Krematorium’, 2. 12 The version of events presented by Hans Maršálek, in the videofilm England Spiel, differs in certain respects: ‘When Pany re-entered the Schreibstube, he was accompanied by Hans Gogl. It was Gogl who dictated to Pany, as he sat at his typewriter in the corner, the term “Flucht” [escaped] against each of the Allied prisoners who had been murdered, laughing all the while as Pany carried out the order.’ 13 Kogon, 269. The remainder, including notably Yeo Thomas of the Royal Air Force, were able, with the help of the prisoners’ resistance network, to escape death by assuming the identities of dead prisoners. 14 Adolf Zutter, to US Capt. A.J.Hackl, Polizeigefängnis Linz, 2 Aug. 1945 (Bundesarchiv, Berlin 1169/98/4 NS 4 Ma/vorl. 56).

10 The Resistance forms a military branch 1 The Spanish unit included, besides Montero, three infantry majors, one naval lieutenant-commander, nine infantry captains, 18 lieutenants, and 36 sergeants. Its approximate strength was three companies, with the lowest unit, the squad, varying in size from five to 15 men (Razola and Constante, 151). The anonymous source of this information was Miguel Malle, who presents it in his ‘Maquis’, 5; ‘Bataille’, 180. 2 Valenzano, 97. 3 Sheppard, interview. 4 Vilanova, 203. 5 This was achieved by José Ester Borrás (Constante, Yo fui, 214). It is significant that Constante does hot claim in this 1976 work what he claimed in 1969 (see below) and which others have repeated, that several pistols and hand-grenades were stolen. 6 Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 75. 7 Constante, Yo fui, 212. 8 Razola and Constante, 151. 9 No author has explained, or even mentioned, the removal of Luis Montero as commander of the Spanish group. Montero was a former railway union leader of the socialist UGT who had served as a captain in the Spanish Republican Army. His political leanings brought him into collision with the Communist Party (Diego, interview). He survived the war, returned to France in 1945, and then ‘disappeared tragically during a secret mission to Spain’, in the words of Ramón Bargueño (Razola and Constante, 142), by which we may understand that he died on another suicide mission. Even now, 50 years after the Liberation, the Spanish communists who were then in authority cannot present a full and clear account of the Spanish network in the Mauthausen Hauptlager in 1945. Even in 1993, in his last months of life, the communist Razola could not bring himself to explain the reasons for the change of command, other than that it was the result of ‘various problems’ (Manuel Razola, Biarritz, letter of 14 Sep. 1993). 10 Malle (writing anonymously in Razola and Constante, 153) refers to the Soviet commander as Lieutenant-Colonel Ivan, and Fabréguet (‘Mauthausen’, 1000) follows

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11 12

13 14

15

suit. Pirogov is mentioned by Malle (ibid. 170) as Soviet commander only after the departure of the SS. The forces placed under the Soviet commander were: 330 Soviets, 47 Germans, 37 Czechs, 36 Yugoslavs, 20 Austrians, and 45 Austrian-led exInternational Brigaders; those placed under the Spanish commander were 75 French and Belgians, 59 Spaniards, 22 Poles, and the hundred or so inmates of the Sanitätslager who were all that were well enough to take any part at all. Malle adds (‘Bataille’, 198) that Constante, Serra, and Yébenes Romo were promoted to lieutenant. This is disputed by Fabréguet (‘Mauthausen’, 987) who refers to him as a major. Fabréguet (ibid.) claims that it was Montero (a socialist) who, in turn, removed Lavín (a communist) from the military command and appointed Malle (a communist) to replace him—an unlikely scenario. Miguel Malle, from Jaca, is listed among the many contributors to Razola and Constante’s Triangle bleu, but he is almost the only one not to sign any portion of it. In fact, it is he who provided the section ‘Rapport sur l’Appareil militaire international’ (149–71), in which he guards his anonymity to such a point that he refers to himself, albeit the overall commander, as Miguel (153, et seq.). Malle, who after the war lived in Digne up to his death in 1992, and who had the means, as an insurance company manager married to a physician, to devote much of his life to his memoirs, left behind an enormous manuscript entitled ‘De Madrid à Mauthausen’. The work is divided into three parts. The first concerns the Spanish Civil War, the second the Resistance in France, and the third Mauthausen. In the Civil War he served with Constante in the 43rd Division. The second part includes a lengthy account (98– 102) of the tortures he underwent in France at the hands of the Gestapo. He had fought as a major commanding guerrilla groups in Landes and Basses-Pyrénées, and had been captured on 4 May 1943 while he was spying inside a Blockhaus, still under construction, of the Atlantic Wall in the vicinity of Bordeaux. He received the assignation NN. His route to Mauthausen passed through the transit camp at Neue Bremm near Saarbrücken, where he first met his fellow-prisoner Sir Robert Sheppard (107) and arrived with him at Mauthausen in Sep. 1943. The third part of Malle’s manuscript, relating to Mauthausen, was written in separate parts between 1946 and 1977 (my examination of his papers in Digne). He was saved on arrival by two Spaniards in the Politische Abteilung who succeeded in ‘losing’ his NN notification (Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 987). The comfortable life which Malle attained after the war did not affect his communist ideology. While he was ready to admit the Party’s mistakes and excesses, he remained a dogmatic Party member. The copy of my Jours de gloire, jours de honte in his library in Digne is decorated in the margins with many hostile comments, with a final summing-up that the author ‘can only be a Trotskyist’! Razola and Constante, 128, 153; Vilanova, 204. The Austrian was Col. Heinrich Kodré; the Frenchman, Capt. Olivier (Maršálek, Geschichte, 332). Malle, ‘Maquis’, 5–6. It is curious that Malle, who wrote this in 1946, chose in 1969 to attribute this key role of Russian-Spanish interpreter to his PCE colleague Constante (Razola and Constante, 151), whom he describes (‘Bataille’, 198) as the only Spaniard at Mauthausen who spoke Russian. Razola and Constante, 151. Malle (‘Bataille’, 188) acknowledges the help he received from the draughtsman Muñoz Orts (see below), who provided him with maps of the camp and its vicinity.

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16 Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 71; Baum, 116; Razola and Constante, 134; Vilanova, 205; Alfaya 117. Dürmayer had received his doctorate in law, and had served in Spain as a political commissar (Malle, ‘Empire’, 122). 17 An attempt at Gusen to organize resistance was at least made, and the Spaniards, housed in Block 9, were in the forefront of it. The groundwork was laid by Santiago Raga, until his transfer back to Mauthausen Mutterlager in February 1942. Others who helped to organize it were Amadeo Cinca Vendrell and Patricio Serrano. Despite the difficulties and the risks, prisoners succeeded in spiriting some weapons out of the workshops, removing them piece by piece and screw by screw (Vilanova, 203, 205). 18 Freund, ‘Berauscht’, 74. 19 Pappalettera, Passerai, 223–5. 20 Barta, diary, passim; Langbein, Résistance, 457; Freund, ‘Berauscht’, 60, 70. 21 Barta, diary; Langbein, Résistance, 124; Freund, Arbeitslager, 407.

11 Reds and Blues replace the Greens and Blacks 1 Vilanova, 201. 2 Razola and Constante, 136. Maršálek mentions the case of Johann Zaremba, guilty of multiple murder in the quarry, who was transferred on 10 Feb. 1944 to KL-Kauen in Lithuania (Geschichte, 40). 3 Pappalettera, Parola, 230. 4 Baum, 133. 5 Pappalettera, Parola, 230; Maršálek, Geschichte, 62, 316. 6 Hans Maršálek, letter to Juan de Diego Herranz, Vienna, dated 8 Nov. 1969; quoting from the official Gusen register of deaths, the original copy of which is in his personal possession. 7 García Barrado, interview. 8 Diego, interview. 9 Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 58; Artur London, in Razola and Constante, 125; ibid. 193. 10 Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 859–60, 927. Pierre Daix was also assigned at this time to registration duties, but in a subordinate role. 11 These seating positions were checked by the author with Diego and Dobiáš at Mauthausen in May 1995. 12 Razola and Constante, 136. The account is questionable; see above, p. 193. 13 Ibid. 134–6; Vilanova, 201–3. 14 Maršálek, Geschichte, 242. 15 Razola and Constante, 152. 16 Ramón Bargueño, in ibid. 140. Bargueño is mostly remembered for an incident in which he was caught stealing a three kg container of jam. He was forced to eat the entire container in a single sitting (Maršálek, Geschichte, 356; Borrás [Lluch], 381). The physical effect of this, as Bargueño reports it, was that for three days he could neither vomit nor defecate, until Professor Podlaha provided him with an antidote. Afterwards, he adds, he found he had lost his name: not only the SS but the prisoners knew him as ‘Marmeladeding’ (Bargueño and Hernández, 140). 17 Razola and Constante, 106. The Prominenten sometimes held more than one job. It is therefore possible that Azaustre cleaned Ziereis’ office, as he claims. But Azaustre also

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18 19 20 21 22

claims that he served as barber to Ziereis. García Alonso emphatically refutes this: Azaustre was Friseur in Block 6, but never a barber of the SS, least of all of Ziereis (interview). Ibid. 140; Alfaya, 118. Cf. Pike, Service, 238–9, 251–2. Constante, Yo fui, 273. For the fate of Bruckner, cf. Pike, Service, 364. García Alonso, interview. Comellas, interview.

12 Incidents in the photo lab 1 When García described this event in 1975, in a letter to Constante, he added that the two Poles in the Erkennungsdienst who witnessed it with him were still alive and ready to testify. Constante did not reply. 2 The account of the visit to the brothel is provided by Juan de Diego (interview), who corroborates the general lines of García Alonso’s testimony on the fate of Grabowski. 3 García Alonso, interview. His registration card reads: Stefan Grabowski, born 29 Jan. 1889, KLM 34.535, Polish, Red, died 6 Nov. 1944. 4 It is most unlikely that Ricken could call listening to the BBC part of his duties, but it is nevertheless true that the Politische Abteilung (to which he was attached) was responsible, for security reasons, for monitoring foreign radio stations (Hackett, 256). If Schulz had anyone at Mauthausen employed in this capacity, it has not come to light. 5 García Alonso, interviews. 6 Ibid. If Antonio García refers to Ramón as a friend, he is the only surviving Spaniard to do so. Ramón Verge Armengol, referred to by all only by his first name Ramón, had a privileged post in the Revier without having any know ledge of medicine, and Antonio García knew of his reputation as a moral weakling before he was carried inside. Verge would help those he considered important, and let die those he considered unimportant (Diego, interview). ‘Certainly I thought he could kill me,’ says Antonio García, ‘especially if I contracted tuberculosis, but I was confident that my status would protect me. Ramón knew I worked for Ricken.’ A second factor also made a difference: Verge was born in Jesús, a village outside Tortosa, García’s hometown, and though the two had never met before meeting in the Revier, the patria chica connection carries great weight among Spaniards.

13 The Soviet break-out from the Death Block 1 A small number of the prisoners were Polish (survivors of the 1944 Warsaw uprising) and Yugoslav. Fabréguet (‘Mauthausen’, 894) reports that there were also some Dutchmen; de Diego (interview) denies this. A few were Germans, probably Wehrmacht officers connected with the Bomb Plot of July 1944 (Santísteban, interview). 2 Pappalettera, Passerai, 228–37; Pappalettera, Parola, 93; Ramón Bargueño, in Razola and Constante, 141; Maršálek, ‘Mauthausen’, 4. 3 Smirnov, 26.

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4 Some of them have been identified: Lt. Col. Nikolaï Vlassov, former test pilot and Hero of the USSR; and three other air force officers: Col. Aleksandr Issupov, Col. Kirill Tchubchenkov, and Capt. Gennadi Mordovtsev (Smirnov, 29). 5 Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 900. 6 The bodies of Vlassov, Issupov and Tchubchenkov were identified the next morning by prisoners working in the crematorium Kommando (Smirnov, 30). 7 Lt. Viktor Ukrainzev, to Peter Kammerstätter, Mauthausen Gendarmerie, X, 560, 30. 8 The SS photo taken by Ricken the morning after the escape shows that on the outer side, along the track walked by the personnel of the Erkennungsdienst, snow had been piled up to nearly half the height of the wall, facilitating the descent of the escaping prisoners. This would explain the reference by various writers to piled-up snow aiding in the escape, but it is unimaginable that the SS allowed the prisoners to pile up snow on the inside of Block 20. So what explains the piled up snow on the outside of Block 20? Antonio García, who passed it with others in the Erkennungsdienst some hours earlier on their return to the fortress, makes no mention of it. If the local Resistance had no knowledge at all of the plan for the break-out, the matter remains a mystery. At the Nuremberg Tribunal, Francesc Boix testified that in the early morning of 3 Feb. 1945, he assisted his ‘boss’ (hence, Ricken) by holding the lighting accessory while he photographed the interior of Block 20 (Dubost, 154). This claim is challenged all down the line by Antonio García. Firstly, although García fell sick and entered the Revier in February 1945, he had not yet entered the Revier at the time of the Soviet break-out, because he has testified to the condition of the Erkennungsdienst on the morning of 3 February. Secondly, García denies that Ricken ever ordered him —and still less Boix—to accompany him in any sortie at night to help him with lighting, even for an incident of unparallelled magnitude such as this. Two photos of Ricken’s work that night (one of the interior of Block 20, and the other of the wall photographed from the outside) were nevertheless saved from destruction. While Boix insisted that it was he who printed the film and saved the two photos, García replies with a categorical denial: ‘Boix never developed or printed anything.’ Today, the visitor to Mauthausen finds only tall grass on the site where the Erkennungsdienst stood, but a fence with protective wire now places the site inside the perimeter of the fortress, which was not the case at the time of the great escape. The fence is thus a continuation of the granite wall running alongside Block 20. In 1996, I asked Manuel García, the former custodian of Mauthausen Museum, to inspect the site with me; he could not tell me how or when the fence was erected. Since there would be no reason for the Soviet or Austrian authorities to build such a fence, it must be assumed that the SS erected the fence in the aftermath of the Soviet break-out. 9 Constante (Yo fui, 2) once again plays with the facts, presenting a map of the camp with an outer perimeter of electrified fence. 10 The tent camp (Zeltlager) was an improvised annex to Mauthausen erected in late 1944 outside the perimeter of the camp and guarded only by wood-built watchtowers. Its purpose was to house the thousands of evacuees from the east, made up especially of Hungarian and Polish Jews, for whom the Hauptlager even with its extensions, had no room. 11 It was code-named Hasenjagd (rabbit hunt) Mühlviertel after the local area, comprising the quarter of Upper Austria to the east of Linz. 12 Chronik des Gendarmeriepostens Mauthausen, 2 Feb. 1945, 559. 13 Horwitz, 136.

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14 Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 898. 15 Dr Teichmann, Kripo, Linz: telegram no. 67, 3 Feb. 1945, 14.15 hrs, to RSHA Amt V Berlin, BdS Vienna, etc. 16 The Mauthausen Gendarmerie even received a severe reprimand for obeying the wrongful orders of Fleischmann not to open fire (Bericht des Gendarmeriepostenkommandos Perg, an den Sicherheitsdirektor für das Mühlviertel betreffend verhalten der SS bei der Wiedergreifung entflohenen Häftlinge des KZ Mauthausen, 22 Feb. 1946). Mauthausen Gendarmerie, X, 559, 29. 17 Boehmberger committed suicide in May 1945. The Ortsgruppenleiter who gave the order to the civilians to kill the fugitives was never brought to trial. Nor was Boehmberger, the only Austrian civilian to kill the fugitives himself (Andreas Gruber, private information). 18 Ibid. 19 Bargueño and Hernández, 158–9. Wilhelm Ornstein, who served as clerk in the crematorium, reports a total of 82 dead on the first day, 110 on the second day, and a final total of 476 at the end often days (‘Krematorium’, 4). 20 Bargueño, interview; Bargueño in Razola and Constante, 144. 21 Maršálek, Geschichte, 262. 22 Ibid. Pappalettera (Passerai, 236–7) identifies the farmhands. 23 Ibid; Horwitz, 135, 139–41. 24 Maršálek, Geschichte, 262; Wormser-Migot, 130–1; Horwitz, 132, 137–8. 25 Maršálek, Geschichte, 262–3. 26 García Alonso, interview; Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 57, 76; Baum, 45–54; Pappalettera, Parola, 67; Razola and Constante, 94; Vilanova, 225; Le Chêne, 152; Mauthausen, 42; Horwitz, 136; Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 894, 898. André Lacaze (in Laffitte, Pendaison, 11) reports the figures given by Radio Moscow after the death of Stalin: 800 took part in the break-out, of whom only nine survived. There is no reason to accept these figures as authoritative. Pappalettera, (Passerai, 229) states that he recounted this episode on Soviet radio in 1958, and that he owed much of his information to a Soviet journalist who was interned in Block 12 and known only by his first name, Volodja. 27 Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 900. 28 Abramov, who became Professor of German History at Moscow State University, to Juan de Diego and Germaine Tillion during their visit to Moscow (Diego, interview). S.Smirnov, writing at that time of the great escape, provides the identity of those Soviets who planned the original escape that failed, but draws a blank on those who planned the escape that succeeded (Smirnov, passim). For a list of the 11 known survivors, see Annex V.Ivan Baklanov survived by hiding in the forest until an Austrian rescued him in Apr. 1945. The fugitives who hid with the Rudolf Wittberger family in Lanzenberg have not been identified, though they remained in the hayloft until the Liberation; the initiative in this case was taken by the family’s French prisoner of war. 29 The exploit of the herdsman and the cow clearly inspired the 1959 film of Henri Verneuil, La Vache et le prisonnier. 30 Vilanova, 112; based on a report issued by the Legation of the Spanish Republic in Belgrade on 1 Oct. 1965.

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 345

14 Mauthausen as the terminus of evacuation 1 Hackett, 99. 2 Pappalettera, Parola, 34. 3 Ibid. 34, 138. Vilanova (193) refers to a message from Kaltenbrunner to Bachmayer in words identical to those above from Pohl to Ziereis. Vilanova provides no date, or reference, and he is probably wrong, unless Ziereis’ memory failed him on his deathbed. 4 Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 75–6; Razola and Constante, 130, 153; Vilanova, 210. 5 Razola and Constante, 131. The stocks, however, were in no way depleted. The US Army reported that, at the time of the liberation, it found considerable supplies of food, especially potatoes (Pappalettera, Parola, 121). 6 Cf. Vilanova, 212. 7 Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 52–3. This evacuation to Mauthausen in Jan. 1945 included 60 000 Hungarian Jews. A study, admittedly incomplete, of the death marches, shows a mortality rate of 59 per cent (The Liberation of the Nazi Concentration Camps, 91). 8 Maršálek, Geschichte, 299. 9 Pappalettera, Passerai, 199. 10 F.Ricol, Bulletin intérieur d’information et de liaison de l’Amicale des deportés politiques de Mauthausen, 4 (Feb. 1946). 11 Buchenwald’s Gustloff Werke arms factory had been the target of a heavy Allied air raid on 24 Aug. 1944, following which the factory never re-entered production. The resistance network in this camp, which up until 1943 had been purely German, was by now in the hands of an international committee composed of three Germans and one member representing all other nationalities. By March 1945, Buchenwald had its international military organization, in which the Spanish section, comprising nine groups under the command of Ramón Bertolini, formed part of the ‘Blau’ sector headed by Erich Kurschinski (Konzentrationslager Buchenwald, 136). 12 Eugen Kogon (in Tillion, 477), who adds that the secret organization at KL-Dachau was ‘less effective or of no efficacity at all’. 13 Professor A.S.Balachowsky, member of the Institut de France (in Tillion, 466–7). 14 Wiesenthal, 25. Among the survivors was Simon Wiesenthal himself, who earlier had been evacuated from Gross-Rosen with 6000 others. At Mauthausen, between the station and the camp, 100 in his group were shot on the road because they could not keep up in the heavy snow (Wiesenthal, interview). Cf. Kogon, 379. 15 Burney, 37–8, 120–34; Abzug, 21–30. 16 Gaucher, 35. 17 Malle, ‘Empire’, 116–17; Gaucher, 33–4; Vilanova, 178; Pappalettera, Parola, 92; Le Chêne, 120; Bernadac, Jours, 258; Maršálek, Geschichte, 235; Wormser-Migot, 137; ‘Expo Mauthausen’, Galerie Daguerre, Paris (2–30 Apr. 1985). Cf. F.Ricol, Mauthausen: Bulletin intérieur, 4 (Feb. 1946), which paints an even grimmer picture. Gino Valenzano was an eye-witness to the arrival in Mauthausen of survivors of a death march, but he is unable to provide the provenance or date. ‘These survivors,’ he writes, ‘who reached Mauthausen limping, often barefoot, barely standing, famished, freezing and in rags, imagined that at last they would find rest and even bread. Instead of that, the SS would cleave their skulls with their cudgels. I saw two men facing one another and an SS smashed their heads together with such force that both dropped to

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20

21 22 23 24

the ground, unconscious or dead. I saw an old man throw himself at the feet of an SS, begging for mercy. I saw the SS, with perfect serenity, stub his cigarette into the old man’s eye. And, as if their appetite was now whetted, when they had finished they entered Block 15 to do the same to us’ (Valenzano, interview; Valenzano, 83). Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 65. Another crime involving Schulz would have vanished with the mass were it not for the evidence provided by the Spanish Prominenten at Schulz’s trial at Dachau. John Kennedy was a young Englishman from Manchester whose mother was Polish. He had been parachuted into Germany on special mission and arrested. Sent to Mauthausen, he was assigned to Baukommando II. On the evening of 3 Apr. 1945, as the Kommando was passing Schulz’s office on its return to the fortress, Schulz happened to notice a slight figure trailing behind the rest, whom he at once recognized (from their introductory meeting in the Politische Abteilung) as Kennedy. Schulz called to Climent to bring him Kennedy’s file. Immediately after rollcall that evening, Kennedy was summoned to the Lagerschreibstube, and from there escorted by an SS to the Bunker. The next morning his body was lying in the morgue: his life had ended in the ‘portrait studio’. The appropriate falsification was then made in the register (‘Resumen Audición de los días 14 y 15 de septiembre 1962 ante el juez de la Instancia de Colonia (proceso Schulz)’, 3–4.) The Fälscherzentrale formed the RSHA’s Amt VI Gruppe F. Thanks to the files of Interpol—in Germany’s possession from the moment that the RSHA seized its headquarters in Vienna in 1938—Heydrich was able to round up all the top counterfeiters in German-occupied Europe and set them to work for him. The quality of the forgery was thus the highest, especially of British five-pound notes, in accordance with Heydrich’s plan to ruin the British economy by flooding Britain with counterfeit money. The total produced amounted to £130 519 175 (Le Chêne, 137, citing US 12th Army Group, Periodic Intelligence Summary, June 1945). The design of the false note was perfect; the only mistake made was to use new cotton, when the Bank of England used only worn cotton (Decaux, interview; Maršálek, Geschichte, 3rd ed., 77). Diego, interview; Maršálek, Mauthausen, 3, 22; Le Chêne, 136–7; Le Caër, Cicatrices, 95, 100. The counterfeit project was housed near Schörfling, at the northern end of Lake Attersee. Its commandant was SS-Sturmbannführer Friedrich Schwend, a former free-wheeling businessman who was more opportunist than Nazi. After the war he fled to South America and opened an automobile agency in Lima. In 1974 he was arrested for black market currency dealings, imprisoned for two years, and then deported to West Germany, where in July 1976 he was arrested in Bonn when unable to pay a 100 DM bill. The most famous victim of Operation Bernhard’s counterfeit-sterling industry was the Nazi agent ‘Cicero’ (an Albanian named Elyesa Bazna), who as valet to the British Ambassador to Turkey had photographed top-secret Allied documents. For his work, he received £300 000 sterling, most of it in Bernhard money. In Brazil he found his money worthless. He returned to Europe, dying in Munich in 1970, in poverty. Chombart de Lauwe, interview. Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 906. Her father, Miguel Bueno, had shown defiance to an SS; he died in the mobile gaschamber (Odette Ester, interview). Odette Ester, interview. The French nuclear physicist Dr Georges Waysand, whose mother also arrived at Mauthausen in the evacuation from Ravensbrück, provides

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 347

25 26 27

28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35

further information on the Olaso couple. Olaso Piera, a man of many aliases, went also under the name of Kim. His wife or companion Charlotte, who was Basque, had a will of iron, and her friend Angelita Martínez Coulikoff no doubt owed her survival to Charlotte. Angelita was attractive, and even as a famished prisoner she attracted the attention of Francesc Boix, but she also attracted the attention of Mariano Constante, which created a problem with respect to Party discipline (Waysand, interview). For the death in 1954, probably an act of murder, of the Olaso couple, cf. Pike, Jours, 232. Testimony of Alfonsina Bueno Ester, signed in Toulouse, Dec. 1975, in Català, 93. Bargueño, interview; Bargueño, in Razola and Constante, 144. Vilanova, 114, 146; Mauthausen, 38; Català, 93. Cf. Razola and Constante (134, and 140–5) for Ramón Bargueño’s account. Bargueño’s work in the Bunker certainly gave him the opportunity to witness many an atrocity. At Ravensbrück, most of the guards were women; the few who were male were not included in the convoy escort (Chombart de Lauwe, interview). Santísteban, interview, surely exaggerates when he recounts that the woman arranged the tryst by delivering an order: ‘Bring me that one!’ ‘She would not have dared to be so open,’ replies Juan de Diego (interview), supported by others. Santísteban, interview. Cf. Pike, Service, 177, 211. Conchita Ramos Veleta, in Català, 232–7; in Train, 198–9. Bernadac, Jours, 285. Pappalettera, Passerai, 199–200. ‘Krematorium’, 5–8; Choumoff, ‘Quelques’, 1. Wilhelm Ornstein adds in his report that the Austrian civilians and the Wehrmacht men entered the baths laughing, not suspecting that it was a gas chamber. This probably occurred on 28 Apr. 1945, when Eigruber again arrived from Linz to witness the execution of 43 prisoners, mostly Austrian but including the British prisoner Willibald Zelger, of London (Maršálek, Geschichte, 3rd ed., 151; cf. Le Chêne, 125).

15 Growing fears of a general massacre 1 Maršálek, Geschichte, 339, based on an official source. It should be noted that these prostitutes belonged to the prisoners’ brothel, and not to the SS brothel. Those who served the SS would have been recognized by the SS, who could well have been demoralized at the sight of them. The prostitutes at Gusen left for the Hauptlager, where with the others, all in their smart SS uniform, newly tailored, they assisted the Blockführer in their various offices. 2 Choumoff, interview; Tillion, 425. 3 Pappalettera, Parola, 165. On his arrival at Mauthausen at 2 a.m. on 16 Apr., Eigruber began drinking with Ziereis, Schulz, Niedermayer, Roth, Trum, and two others. At 4 a.m., they decided to end the party with a massacre and went to the Bunker, where they shot two Americans, six Kapos who had directed the crematorium at Auschwitz, and four others. 4 Maršálek, Geschichte, 346. 5 Razola and Constante, 160–1; Vilanova, 193. 6 Florian Freund, private correspondence.

348 NOTES TO PP. XVI–3

7 8 9 10 11

12

13 14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29

30 31

32

Alfaya, 111. Pappalettera, Parola, 187. Ibid. Vilanova, 185. Le Chêne, 209. Gusen’s Block 31 was converted in April 1945 into a crude gas chamber where 640 inmates were gassed. The Kapos assisting Seidler and Killermann in the gassing were the Austrian Green Rudolf Fiegl and two German Greens: Franz Liesberg and a certain Amelung. At the Liberation Fiegl and Amelung were caught: Amelung was stoned to death and Fiegl was tried and hanged by the Dachau Tribunal. Liesberg was one of the few Kapos to succeed in fleeing (Pappalettera, Passerai, 138, 274, 294). Tillard, 78; Wormser-Gigot, 231; Vilanova, 213; Le Chêne, 156. According to Patricio Serrano et al. (in Razola and Constante, 187) two Spaniards working in the kitchen Kommando at Gusen II heard that the explosives had been placed in the tunnel. On 28 Apr. 1945, Pierre Serge Choumoff was transferred from Gusen to the Hauptlager, having witnessed these developments before he left. Martha Gammer, St Georgen, letter of 3 Nov. 1997. Freund, Arbeitslager, 457–8. The evacuation of Melk, on 11 Apr. 1945, was amongst the last: 5839 prisoners set out —many others were too sick to move—and the survivors reached Ebensee on 19 Apr. (Le Chêne, 243). Freund, ‘Berauscht’, 57. Laffitte, 351; Mauthausen, 61; Freund, ‘Berauscht’, 58. Wormser-Gigot, 232; Freund, ‘Berauscht’, 59. Wetterwald, 167–8; Laffitte, 371, 374. Maršálek, Geschichte, 268. Laffitte, 401; Mauthausen, 61. Le Chêne’s figure here of 30 000 (235) is unlikely. Freund, ‘Berauscht’, 74, 76. Tillard, Pain, 199–200. Tillard, Mauthausen, 69. Maršálek, ‘Befreiung’, 1. The figure for Gusen III was about 300, the Jews detained there having been dispatched to an unknown destination in the last days of April (Martha Gammer, St Georgen, letter of 3 Nov. 1997). Hackett, 99. Haulot, 171. Dobosiewicz (384) gives the date of the order as 14 Apr. 1945. The lengths to which the SS had gone in their efforts to conceal the truth is illustrated in the case of the two Italian Carabinieri who had arrived at Mauthausen from Italy as escort to a group of Italian prisoners. Rather than allow the two Carabinieri to return to Italy and recount what they had seen at Mauthausen, they were executed, Vinzenz Gogl being among those who took part (Wiesenthal, 320). Diego, interview. Le Chêne, 154; Favez, 362. Maršálek (Geschichte, 322) gives the following breakdown of the 756 women: 489 French, 231 Belgians, 34 Dutch, one Briton and one American. Pappalettera (Passerai, 256–8) quotes from a report by an unnamed CICR delegate in the column that evacuated these 183 Frenchmen. The column reached the camp late in the day, and while the CICR could not enter the fortress to guarantee the distribution of the food supplies, they witnessed the return from work of five columns

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 349

33

34

35 36

37 38 39

40

41

of prisoners, some holding up others too weak to walk. The 183 Frenchmen were finally assembled outside the gates at 4 a.m. Unable to learn anything about the reality inside the fortress, the delegate was overcome by ‘a sense of mystery and horror’. Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 74–5; Germaneau, 27; Favez, 362–3. Maršálek (Geschichte, 322) gives the following breakdown of the 596 male prisoners: 528 French (plus two Poles and one Czechoslovak listed as French), 40 Belgians, 21 Dutch, two Swiss, and two Arabs. The Czech listed as French was Artur London. Choumoff, ‘Quelques’, 1. Choumoff was among them. So was Père Jacques, whom the francophone prisoners at Gusen had chosen as head of their committee, and he arrived at the Hauptlager in that post. It was nevertheless agreed that Father Jacques would step down in deference to Valley. Choumoff served the international committee as an interpreter, and the French-Belgian committee as its secretary. Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 77; Razola and Constante, 154–5. Cf. Vilanova, 189. Haefliger had stopped in St Georgen on 27 April, before continuing on to the Hauptlager. He now chose to stay in that village rather than in Mauthausen village, perhaps because it was slightly familiar to him or perhaps because what he had already glimpsed had whetted his appetite to know more. Interpretation Report No. U.18, Underground Activity at Linz/St Georgen, dated 22 Jan. 1945. Le Chêne, 156–7. This man is not to be confused with Otto Riemer, the disgraced Lagerleiter of Ebensee, who, on his return to the Haupdager, became Poststellenleiter (in control of the postal services). I am grateful to Pierre Serge Choumoff for information that has clarified this story. The account by the survivor Vincenzo Pappalettera (Passerai, 259–68) is a serious misrepresentation of the facts which are accepted on all sides. We know for certain that there was only one CICR delegate who remained in Mauthausen after the rest left on 28 Apr. 1945, and that was Louis Haefliger. Pappalettera presents an account written by a CICR delegate whom he does not name. This delegate relates that the last CICR column which arrived on 28 Apr. was commanded by Haefliger, that Haefliger ordered him (the narrator) to return to Switzerland with the others, and that he categorically refused. Pappalettera then adapts his account to fit the communist canon. He writes of 500 SS still in Mauthausen on 5 May, busily engaged in strengthening the camp’s fortifications. When the same delegate returned to the camp with the American patrol on 5 May, ‘the prisoners had already risen against the SS, the plan had succeeded, the SS were disarmed and taken prisoner’. If, as Pappalettera says, 500 SS were taken prisoner in Mauthausen, why is it that not a single SS prisoner was ever identified? But Pappalettera’s purpose is not to write history but to deny the Americans the credit for liberating the camp. His fictitious CICR delegate adds: ‘In the days that followed I devoted myself to reorganizing the camp. The ex-prisoners had an autonomous administration, under Soviet command. The supervision of the camp functioned perfectly. On 7–8 May the Americans arrived and took over the administration of the Gusen and Mauthausen camps.’ Dobosiewicz, 384.

350 NOTES TO PP. XVI–3

16 The evacuation of the last Nebenlager 1 Streitwieser served briefly as Kommandoführer of Melk in the spring of 1944. He was subsequently Kommandoführer of Schwechat, Floridsdorf, and Modling-Hinterbrühl, among other Kommandos. An incident occurred at Floridsdorf in late Feb. 1945 that was particularly remembered. During roll-call, some prisoners unable to stand were lying in long rows in front of the laundry, waiting to be counted with those who could still stand. Streitwieser was overheard discussing with another SS whether these ‘beggars’ could be sent to the next world with a single kick. The two took a bet. Twice Streitwieser took a short run and drove his boot into a prisoner’s side with all his force. Then the other SS took his turn. The bet was interrupted by the order to proceed with the roll-call (Pappalettera, Parola, 206; Vilanova, 171). The other SS might have been Scharführer Hans Bühner, who seems to have accompanied Streitwieser in his various assignments. 2 Bulletin de l’Amicale de Mauthausen, 136 (Sep. 1967); Pappalettera, Parola, 193–5, 210. 3 Wormser and Michel, 477. 4 Germaneau, 22–3. 5 Josep Bailina, Hispania, 22 (Apr. 1967). 6 These figures are attributed to Ziereis in his death-bed confession (Tillard, Mauthausen, 78). Soriano’s account of the liberation of Dachau contains a number of errors (41, 130, 133). Sir Robert Sheppard, who was earlier in Mauthausen, was in Dachau at the moment of its liberation. If the Catalan Luis Sunyer in the tailor’s shop sewed the flags of the Spanish Republic and the Austrian International Brigade, Sir Robert writes (letter dated 26 Sep. 1989), they were certainly not flying over the main gate when the Americans arrived, nor did Dachau (or Buchenwald) liberate itself by the armed insurrection of the Spaniards and International Brigaders (or by any other insurrection). It is another sad instance of survivors rewriting history in line with their dreams. 7 Borrás [Lluch], 172. 8 Comellas, interview. 9 A factory in Lenzing had been converted into a women’s camp (Le Caër, Cicatrices, 106). 10 A Hitlerjugend camp had been set up on the lake shore (ibid. 107). 11 Comellas, interview. 12 Le Caër, interview; Paul Le Caër, Bulletin de l’Amicale de Mauthausen, 27 (July 1952); Bernadac, Jours, 299; Le Caër, Schlier, 56–60; Le Caër, Cicatrices, 101–7, passim. 13 Le Chêne, 136–7, citing 12th Army Group, Periodic Intelligence Summary, Hune 1945. 14 Malle, ‘Bataille’, 194. 15 Wormser-Migot, 216. 16 Ramón Bargueño writes that he was forced to share a bed with five others. Waking from cold in early morning, he pulled the blanket, at first tentatively, then more firmly, to find that all five were dead (Bargueño and Hernández, 132). 17 Maršálek, ‘Mauthausen’, 10; Tillard, Mauthausen, 36; Busson, 178–9; Maršálek, Geschichte, 182. 18 Camp III had opened in summer 1944 to house women prisoners from Warsaw. In Apr. 1945 it served as antechamber to the Gaskammer, and on 19 Apr. no fewer than 1300 weakened prisoners were concentrated there prior to their execution by gas. 19 Jean Benech, Bulletin de l’Amicale de Mauthausen, 37 (May 1954).

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 351

20 Maršálek (‘Mauthausen’, 6) is of the opinion that the remainder of Camp III were saved only by the determined action of the international movement. 21 Vilanova, 210. 22 The last gassing was carried out on 28 Apr. The gas chamber was dismantled on the night of 29–30 Apr. (Maršálek, Geschichte, 243, 267). 23 Razola and Constante, 160–1. 24 Ziereis admitted on his death-bed that Bachmayer had ordered their execution (Tillard, Mauthausen, 78). Prisoners assigned to work in crematoria lived in danger of being executed after three weeks, this being Himmler’s general order, but it was not necessarily carried out, and Ziereis said on his death-bed that at Mauthausen he observed it only at the end. Wilhelm Ornstein and David Zemet were Polish Jews who were assigned to Mauthausen’s crematorium when they arrived at the camp in Aug. 1944, and while they were no longer working in that Kommando they still risked execution. They, together with Kanduth, now owed their survival to Joan Gil, who as Stubendiener in Block 6 hid them in his unit; their testimony was later presented at the Nuremberg Tribunal (Roig, Noche, 220). The remaining eight of the crematorium workers were now the very last to be executed. Among these were five from the Gusen crematorium, including their Kapo Hans Schwindemann, who were machine-gunned early on 3 May in front of the morgue (Choumoff, in Tillion, 429–30, 441; Maršálek, Geschichte, 326). 25 The SS records at Mauthausen ended on 2 May. The order to destroy all records in Mauthausen and all its remaining Kommandos went into effect on the same day (Maršálek, Geschichte, 326). Bargueño was one of the very few among those so employed not to have been sent to the gas chamber after this work was completed (Borrás [Lluch], 381). 26 Ramón Bargueño, in Razola and Constante, 144. Col. Seibel recalls viewing the remnants of the gas chamber on the day of his arrival (interview). For irrefutable evidence of the existence and use of the gas chamber, see Choumoff. 27 Diego, interview; Vilanova, 210. 28 Razola and Constante, 155. 29 Miguel Malle (writing anonymously in Razola and Constante, 155) claims that the AMI held one machine-gun, 20 pistols, 34 grenades, and 47 Molotov cocktails. Writing 18 years later, Malle (‘Bataille’, 190) scales back the claim: a dozen pistols, some thirty grenades, and knives. He also explains the inclusion of the sub-machinegun: this was seized by the AMI at the end of Apr. 1945 from a Hungarian SS, along with his pistol, grenades and ammunition. Juan de Diego, who is not anticommunist, scorns this communist boast, adding that if Razola were a serious author he would tell his readers where the weapons were hidden. More modestly, Malle adds (ibid. 191) that the AMI had another weapon: a Yugoslav or Romanian prisoner, a shepherd of enormous size, was highly skilled at the sling, and deadly accurate at 30 metres; Raimundo Súñer, the mechanic in the garage Kommando, supplied him with large steel balls and screws for ammunition. Cf. Alfaya, 114.

352 NOTES TO PP. XVI–3

17 The photos and the Poschacher boys 1 ‘All the photos were destroyed,’ Ziereis testified in his deposition (Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 1076). 2 Cortés, interview. 3 Cf. Bargueño and Hernández, 153–6. 4 The author accepts these details, which he has discussed face to face with Bargueño, and which are corroborated by an unimpeachable witness, Pierre-Serge Choumoff (interviews). If Bargueño mentions none of this in his published account, these are the natural omissions of a book written by a cook helped by an unlettered newspaperman. 5 Diego, interview. 6 Cortés, interview. Gasthaus Erika became Edward Kaisers Gasthaus, and is now Gasthof Windner. 7 Cortés, interview. The two Spaniards were the brothers Juan and Miguel Sempere, from Alicante. 8 Martina Schröck, Schardenberg, letter of 29 May 1997. Hatel was in the SS, but was of good character (ibid, citing Leopoldine Drexler). 9 Michael Pointner nevertheless survived the war, dying in Mauthausen village in 1965, aged 71 (Drexler, interview). 10 The Cortés family had suffered its full share. While the mother and the daughters had been kept in an internment camp in France, the father Francisco and all three sons, aged 20, 17, and 14, had been sent to Mauthausen. Francisco and his eldest son José, who had lost a leg in the Civil War, were sent to Gusen, where both died. Manuel, the youngest son, had been placed with his brother Jacinto in the Poschacherjugend (Cortés, interview). As for Grau, Jacinto Cortés belittles the part he played (ibid.). It would be normal for the Party to appoint a member to watch on the actions of the other member. 11 Cortés and Grau describe rather differently the form in which the photos were conveyed. Grau writes of negatives of 4 cm×4 cm placed in Valda tins (letter to Luis García Manzano of 15 June 1965). Cortés recounts that the photos were conveyed from the camp in the type of square bowl fitted with a lid which had been used by the French Army and had been requisitioned by the Germans (letter to Luis García Manzano of Feb. 1964; ‘Luisin’, Le Patriote résistant, supplément to no. 426, Apr. 1975).

18 The departure of the SS 1 Jean Benech, Bulletin de l’Amicale de Mauthausen, 37 (May 1954). 2 These were José Puig and a certain Rasal. The three Spaniards slept in the first cells in the wing to the right (Bargueño, interview). 3 Bargueño’s incapacity to organize his thoughts has brought ridicule upon him, and nowhere more so than in his description of the final night of the SS in KLMauthausen (Bargueño and Hernández, 165–6). It is nevertheless reasonable to suppose that the basic elements as given above are accurate, since they have been tested in a lengthy oral discussion. 4 Maršálek, Geschichte, 327–8. 5 Martha Gammer, St Georgen, letter of 3 Nov. 1997.

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 353

6 Ziereis’ widow, in an official deposition, gave 5 May as the date of their departure (Pappalettera, Parola, 150; cf. ibid. 74). Boüard (‘Mauthausen’, 77) gives the last days of April. 3 May is the only date which conforms with the surrounding events, and is supported by Maršálek, Geschichte, 327. 7 Pappalettera, Parola, 150; Borrás [Lluch], 138. 8 Pappalettera, Parola, 216, 218. 9 Ibid. 75; Maršálek, Geschichte, 200. 10 Diego, interview; Pappalettera, Parola, 86–7; Le Chêne, 174. The US authorities exhumed his body to identify him, then reburied it in the same place. 11 Maršálek, Geschichte, 215. 12 Ramón Bargueño, in Razola and Constante, 145. The argument of André Lacaze (in his preface to Laffitte, Pendaison, 10) to the effect that 1500 prisoners assembled on 5 May and dissuaded the SS from liquidating the camp, is pure invention. 13 Maršálek, Geschichte, 328. Maršálek repeats here what he had previously stated in his 1974 ed. (268) but for good measure places it in italics. 14 Malle ridicules Kern’s promise (‘Bataille’, 195) but Malle is a major contributor to the myth of Mauthausen’s self-liberation. 15 Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 77; Razola and Constante, 146, 162. 16 Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 1036. 17 When caught by US forces, Reimer would be put on trial in 1947 and sentenced to death. His wife appealed to Haefliger to intervene and request clemency. With Haefliger’s help, the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and later reduced to 12 years. Reimer was set free in 1951 (Matt, 122). 18 Martha Gammer, St Georgen, letter of 3 Nov. 1997. 19 López, interview. 20 Pappalettera, Parola, 88; Razola and Constante, 165, 171; Vilanova, 209; Le Chêne, 173.

PART IV: LIBERATION * The words on the 50-metre banner draped across the main gate at Mauthausen, on the inside, to welcome the US forces on their second arrival on 6 May 1945. A translation in English and Russian, invisible in almost every photograph of the gate on that memorable occasion, was added underneath the Spanish text and reads in English: ‘The Spaniards antifasciste greet the liberating forces.’ The Russian text is impeccable.

1 The Soviet assault from the east 1 Cf. Rauchensteiner, 292. 2 As SS-Brigadeführer in command of the 2nd SS-Panzerdivision (‘Das Reich’), Lammerding had been responsible for the atrocities committed in Tulle and Oradoursur-Glane in France (cf. Pike, ‘Forces’, 12–14; Service, 204). He had left its command in Jan. 1945, but with a promotion. 3 The rank held by Dietrich was the highest rank attainable in the SS apart from that held by Himmler; he outranked even Heydrich and his successor Kaltenbrunner.

354 NOTES TO PP. XVI–3

4 Cf. Pike, ‘Plans’, 110. 5 It is significant that Rauchensteiner, in his superb work on the battle for Austria in 1945, does not mention by name, with the sole exception of Lehmann, the commanders of the SS divisions. The omission is clearly due to the chaotic state of these divisions in the final months of the war, with constantly changing command and the disintegration of the divisions into Kampfgruppen. 6 Rauchensteiner, 342. 7 Ibid. 165. 8 Ibid. 168. 9 Rendulic’s chief of staff was Generalleutnant Heinz von Gyldenfeldt, who had played a major role in the retreat of Army Group G from southern France in 1944 (cf. Pike, ‘Retraite’, passim; ‘Combat’, passim). 10 Rauchensteiner, 343. 11 There were no fewer than ten changes in the command of ‘Das Reich’ between Feb. 1943 and the end of the war (Windrow, 12). While Lehmann retained command between Mar. and May 1945, he had to be replaced temporarily by SSStandartenführer Karl Kreutz. 12 Kumm had previously served, from Feb. 1944 to Jan. 1945, as commander of the 7th (‘Prinz Eugen’) before handing the command to Schmidhuber. 13 Stadler had commanded the 4th Regiment (‘Der Führer’) of ‘Das Reich’ at the time of the atrocities in Tulle and Oradour-sur-Glane (cf. Pike, ‘Forces’, 12–14; ‘Retraite’, 49). 14 Rauchensteiner, 238. 15 Skorzeny had been given the credit for the rescue of Mussolini in Italy in Sep. 1943. In fact, Mussolini was rescued by a German unit, but to encourage foreign volunteers to join the SS, Himmler played with the facts. 16 Rauchensteiner, 344. 17 Ibid. 130, 379. 18 Löhr’s OB-Südwest was in turn placed under Kesselring’s OB-Süd on 6 May 1945.

2 The American assault from the west 1 Berchtesgaden was taken by Leclerc’s French 2nd Armoured Division, which was part of Milburn’s US XXIst Army Corps. 2 Hackett, 4–5. Cf. Jorge Semprún, French-German TV Channel Arte, 29 Jan. 2000. 3 Paramount News on 4.Mar. 1945 showed the liberation from a Stalag of some halfstarved Americans, Britons and Australians. The documentary stated that ‘the men were given their first taste of good food’. It seems that little was learnt in the weeks that followed about the effect of giving ‘good food’ to starving survivors. 4 Hackett, 7. 5 Ibid. 6. 6 Ibid. 7–8. At dusk on 20 Apr. 1945, 20 000 survivors of Buchenwald shuffled back up the hill from Weimar to attend a memorial service to the 51 000 of their comrades who died there. They marched to the same mournful tune that the prison band used to play for them each morning when they were sent to work. 7 Ibid. 7.

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 355

8 Ibid. 8. 9 Since Bergen-Belsen was liberated by troops of Montgomery’s 21st Army Group to the north, it was the camp that received the most publicity in the British press. Other SS camps liberated later by Montgomery nevertheless received little publicity, even in the British press. It was in both cases the first that counted most. 10 Hackett, 10. Another who was nauseated, even without visiting the site, was John Colville, Churchill’s private secretary, who wrote in his diary: ‘The papers are full of [reports], with stomach-turning photographs,… Proof is now supplied that the stories of the last ten years have not been just propaganda’ (ibid. 11–12). This is the same John Colville who had once described a British Government report on the SS camps as ‘a sordid document calculated to appeal to people’s lowest instincts’ (cf. Pike, Service, viii–ix). 11 ‘We came away sceptical,’ was the comment of William I.Nichols, then editor of This Week (New York), who was part of the group visiting Buchenwald on 16 Apr. 1945 (reunion in the Hôtel Scribe, Paris, of former war correspondents, 12 Sep. 1996). 12 Nichols, interview. 13 Hackett, 13. 14 Ibid. 9. 15 US 11th Armored Division, Periodic Report no. 115, 24 Apr. 1945, compiled by Col. Edgar T.Conley, Chief of Staff to Maj.-Gen. Dager, in command. 16 Kogon, 419. Kogon adds that the ex-prisoners were happy enough to hand the SS over to the Allied troops. If this astonishing statement is true in the case of Buchenwald, Kogon is not in the same position of authority to speak (as in fact he does) for those liberated in other camps, where his claim would be contested. The title of Kogon’s excellent book is in fact a misnomer: Kogon experienced Buchenwald only, and over ninety per cent of his study of the KZ system is based on Buchenwald alone. Whatever the circumstances were at Buchenwald, it did not affect the determination of the exprisoners in that camp to press for justice. On 19 Apr. the leaders of the communist parties represented in Buchenwald signed a resolution, with Jaime Nieto (‘Bolados’) signing on behalf of the PCE (Konzentrationslager Buchenwald, 167). The resolution read in part: ‘Thus we swear in front of the whole world on this roll-call square, this place of fascist cruelty, that we will give up the fight only when the last guilty parties stand before the people’s judges.’ Pister, who had served as Buchenwald’s Lagerführer since 21 Jan. 1942, was captured, tried, and sentenced to be hanged. He died of a heart attack in Landsberg prison on 28 Sep. 1948. 17 US 11th Armored Division, Periodic Report no. 115, 24 Apr. 1945. 18 Robert Daniel, interviewed in 1992 (Associated Press, 6 Jan. 1997). 19 ‘Seeing Dachau,’ commented William I.Nichols, ‘we were convinced’ (interview). 20 García Mochales, interview. 21 Gilbert, 38; Rod Usher, Time (New York), 8 May 1995. 22 Sheppard, interview. 23 At some point in the advance, the men of ‘Thunderbolt’ received the order to confiscate the Germans’ musical instruments, the better to demoralize them (Bergh and Hens, interview). 24 The ‘After Action’ report was signed by Maj. Douglas on behalf of Lt. Col. Slayden (G-2) and prepared for Col. Edgar T.Conley, Chief of Staff to Maj. Gen. Dager (document in the author’s possession). 25 Rauchensteiner, 347.

356 NOTES TO PP. XVI–3

26 Ibid. 353. 27 It is not stated, in Dager’s report of 4 May 1945 to Irwin, who the emissary was or under whose authority he acted. 28 Among these prisoners was a group of 4200 employed in the Hermann Goering Werke in Kleinmünchen-Ebelsberg, to the south of Linz. They were evacuated only a few hours before the entry of the US troops, but on this occasion their march was quickly intercepted. Several thousand Jewish prisoners were marched from the Hauptlager to Gunskirchen on 1 May 1945; they were liberated on 5 May by troops of Wyman’s 71st Inf. Div. 29 US 11th Armored Division, Periodic Reports; Reynolds Packard, United Press. 30 The two interpreters were Capt. Peter Schoyvaloff, of New York City, and Lt. Alex Bobuck, of Hempstead, Long Island. 31 Cf. Pike, ‘Retraite’, 72; ‘Combat’, 146–8. 32 Le Caër, Cicatrices, 107, refer to a Capt. Chatenay, a French liaison officer serving with the US 80th Inf. Div.

3 The liberation of Gusen and Mauthausen 1 Two lieutenants commanding the platoon had been killed in Feb. 1945 and the second had not been replaced. 2 Kosiek’s account (‘Liberation of Mauthausen’) first appeared in Thunderbolt, published by the US 11th Armored Division Association, Washington DC, edited by Kenneth W.Hanlon, vol. 8, no. 7, May–June 1955. The account, though Kosiek had ten years to prepare it, is confused and poorly written. The present account is based largely on the testimony of Frau Martha Gammer, an inhabitant of St Georgen who was an eye-witness to these events and who has spent much of her life since then in collecting information on the subject. 3 See Annex VIII for the names of the American soldiers who reached Mauthausen on 5 May 1945. 4 Even ten years after the event, Kosiek, inexplicably, described Haefliger as ‘the spokesman for this unholy mob’. He added that Haefliger (whom he does not name) was accompanied by two SS captains (Kosiek, 1). 5 Kosiek, 1. 6 Pausch was nevertheless captured, tried, sentenced, and hanged in Landsberg prison. 7 Favez, 363. 8 Kosiek’s account makes no mention of the presence on 5 May 1945 of Hens’ patrol, either in St Georgen or in the Haupdager, and 50 years later neither Hens nor Bergh had a recollection of meeting Kosiek or his men in either place. Hens remembers being told in St Georgen that another US patrol had passed through 15 minutes earlier, bound for the Haupdager. A photograph taken outside the tunnel in St Georgen proves, however, that the two patrols were there together; Haefliger is seen standing alongside Sellers’ half-track, and when Kosiek left for the Haupdager he took Haefliger with him. Kosiek, now dead, returned to Mauthausen in 1975 and 1980, for the 30th and the 35th anniversaries. Saunders and the Hens-Bergh partnership met for the first time in May 1995, for the 50th.

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 357

9 No other account refers to the emplacement of heavy German artillery to defend the fortress, and those survivors interviewed emphatically deny it. On the other hand, the US 11th Armored Division’s daily report for May 1945 refers to heavy mortar fire poured that morning on Kosiek’s platoon. No doubt Kosiek confused the matter in his mind. 10 Liberation, 42. 11 Saunders’ gunner, John L.Slatton, concocted the story that Wiesenthal crawled to his armoured car, touched it, then passed out: ‘He was so weak, he was out for hours.’ Even Slatton’s friends wondered how he would have recognized Wiesenthal. At the 1994 reunion in Birmingham, both Wiesenthal and Slatton admitted that neither had seen the other (Teresa Williams, Northwest Alabamian, 6 July 1994). 12 The other two were Sgt. Louis Biagioni, an OSS agent captured in Italy in summer 1944, and Lionel Romney, a Negro fireman in the US Merchant Marine captured by the Italians in Pantelleria in June 1940. The three American male prisoners were not aware of the presence of three American women in another part of the camp, who were thus left behind. One of these was Isabella (or Carlotta) Dien (or Dean), who had been captured in France, interned in Ravensbrück, evacuated to Mauthausen and was now lying in the Wiener Graben women’s hospital outside the camp. Jack Taylor also reported the presence in Mauthausen of two British officers, Capt. John Starr of SOE and the RAF fighter pilot Fl. Lt. Toni Spears. Apparently, the Americans left the Britons in the camp. 13 1945: The Year of Liberation, 56. 14 Kosiek, 6. On one occasion his execution order was spotted by Milos Stransky, a Czech working in the Politische Abteilung, who burned it (Andreas Gruber, private information). 15 Teresa Williams, Northwest Alabamian, 6 July 1994. 16 Ibid. 17 Martha Gammer times their return to St Georgen at 4.55 p.m. (private correspondence). 18 Saunders was shortly afterwards injured in an accident and lost his entire collection, including many SS souvenirs. 19 These included 17 officers and 225 men of the Vienna fire brigade. The rest were therefore Wehrmacht and Volkssturm personnel. 20 Martha Gammer, private correspondence.

4 The night of 5–6 May 1 Pike, ‘Reflexions’, 172–4. 2 Pike, Service, 268. 3 Colonel John R.Miller, Defense and Army Attaché, US Embassy, Vienna, to Dr John Greenwood, US Army Center of Military History, Washington DC, U-282–95, dated 7 July 1995. 4 Fabréguet (‘Mauthausen’, 1037) remarks upon the ‘highly anti-American tone of accounts in general regarding the Liberation, the American rôle being deliberately minimized’.

358 NOTES TO PP. XVI–3

5 ‘Maršálek controlled the history of Mauthausen for decades. His first edition in 1952 followed the Soviet line. Only later did he change his opinion’ (Martha Gammer, St Georgen, letter of 3 Nov. 1997). 6 Choumoff, ‘Quelques’, 5. 7 Wiesenthal, interview. 8 In his first (1974) edition, Maršálek makes only one reference to the Americans (269), saying that units under Seibel’s command occupied Mauthausen and Gusen on 7 May. In 1980, Maršálek clearly admitted that the two camps were liberated exclusively by the Americans on 5 May 1945 (‘Befreiung’, 10). 9 Smirnov, 26. In his memoirs, Pirogov (293) writes that ‘the American major arrived on 7 May 1945’, without mentioning the earlier arrival of Kosiek. The standard Polish encyclopedia refers to Mauthausen as ‘liberated by the Soviets on 6 May 1945’ (Choumoff library). Even Pappalettera (Passerai, 228, 268) writes that the Americans ‘reached Mauthausen on 7 and 8 May’. 10 Malle, ‘Empire’, 118. 11 Malle, ‘Bataille’, 196. 12 Bargueño and Hernández, 167. 13 Constante, Yo fui, 288. 14 Morillon, 155. His self-published book 34577 takes its title from his registration number. 15 See, for example, Constante, Yo fui, 288. 16 Malle, ‘Bataille’, 204. 17 Mauthausen, 2 Apr. 1997. 18 Leander Hens, letter of 17 Oct. 1995. 19 Přemysl Dobiáš, letter of 25 July 1994. 20 ‘The pistols had been passed to de Diego by the Spanish group which seized them, and the Vienna firemen who were at the switchboard walked out without saying a word’ (Přemysl Dobiáš, Freudenstadt, Germany, 19 Aug. 1993, audiocassette). Dobiáš adds that de Diego was familiar with every model of small-arms weaponry, and that his pockets were bulging with ammunition. 21 Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 1040, based on an interview with Juan de Diego. 22 Diego, interview; Dobiáš, interview. 23 Malle, ‘Bataille’, 198. 24 Maršálek, 336, 341. 25 López, interview. 26 Martha Gammer, St Georgen, letter of 3 Nov. 1997. The St Georgen villager Rudolf A.Haunschmied also attests to the lynching that broke out among the ex-prisoners and writes of 500 who died in the Gusen camps as a result. 27 López, interview. 28 Martha Gammer, St Georgen, letter of 28 Sep. 1997. 29 Martha Gammer, St Georgen, letter of 3 Nov. 1997. Rudolf A.Haunschmied writes of 150 ex-Kapos captured and brought back to KL-Gusen by the end of May 1945. 30 Pappalettera, Parola, 230. 31 Bernadac, 186 Marches, 367. 32 Roig, Noche, 250. 33 Maršálek, Geschichte, 299. Some half-dozen Spaniards who had played a shabby role in captivity were brought before these courts, both in Gusen and in the Hauptlager; they were sentenced to death and executed (Schröck, 46).

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 359

34 35 36 37

38 39 40

41 42 43 44 45 46

47 48 49

50

51 52

Maršálek, Geschichte, 250. Vilanova, 209. Valley, interview. ‘That is true,’ he insisted, his voice rising (García Barrado, near his home in Mauthausen, 10 Sep. 1996). But García was in Gusen, not the Hauptlager, at the time. Bargueño and Hernández, 172. Malle, ‘Maquis’, 15–16; ‘Empire’, 119. Here is the original of what was published anonymously in Razola and Constante (162). An Italian survivor with no communist connections writes: ‘The Spaniards, who had already saved the camp, now provided for its defence’ (Valenzano, 102). That they provided for its defence is true. Diego, interview. López, interview. Langbein to Diego, discussion. Roig, Noche, 327 et seq. Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 1042–3. Interview in Mauthausen village, 6 Sep. 1996; he preferred not to give his name, saying that he preferred to forget everything that happened in Austria between 1938 and 1945. Jahn, interview. Neumüller, interview. Neumüller (interview) expressed his doubt that the local Resistance ever sank to that level of cruelty, but the fact that the owner of the Taverne says that ‘the past should be forgotten’ adds a certain credibility to his story. A photograph, never published and for good reason, of Miguel Malle and four of his comrades, taken only a few days after the Liberation, shows them to be in good physical condition, despite their long years in captivity. This attests to the need of the SS to feed those prisoners on whom they depended for the orderly running of the camp. The Bürgermeister was afterwards imprisoned for two years (Jahn, interview). Malle suspected him of being a Nazi and had him interned in Mauthausen’s Bunker, until the international committee decided that it was not in their interest to imprison a Red Cross official (Razola and Constante, 166–7; Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 1046). Haefliger’s problems were only beginning, and the attacks on him came from two directions. First of all, he earned the hatred of the USSR and communists in general for contradicting their version of the liberation of Mauthausen (‘Mauthausen liberated itself; there were no Americans, and no Louis Haefliger’). The same opponents even went to the trouble that they had earlier taken with Trotsky, removing his face from photos published in the press and historical texts. The second source of denunciation was the International Red Cross itself. Instead of hailing him as a hero for his courage in staying behind and talking with Ziereis, the CICR accused him of overstepping his mandate by not simply delivering the parcels and leaving with the French and other prisoners, and in so doing compromising the neutrality of the International Red Cross. His honour was not restored in his lifetime. It was only in 1988, when he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Peace, that his reputation was re-established (Martha Gammer, St Georgen, letters of 28 Sep. and 3 Nov. 1997).

360 NOTES TO PP. XVI–3

53 It is not certain that the detachment had any telephone contact with the Hauptlager, though it claimed it had, because it also admitted that the occupation of the village post office was a disappointment from the point of view of obtaining telecommunications. 54 Malle, ‘Bataille’, 198. 55 The three Spaniards wounded were Juan Pagès, José Perlado, and Yébenes Romo (ibid. 200). Before his death in Barcelona in 1978, Pagès founded a Mauthausen survivors’ association in that city on the lines of the FEDIP established in Paris. 56 Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 77; Vilanova, 210; Alfaya, 119. 57 Manuel Razola, letter from Biarritz of 14 Sep. 1993. Lavín was given command of the Sanitätslager, writes Fabréguet (‘Mauthausen’, 987). The appointment was loaded with irony: the 100 inmates considered fit to serve could hardly walk. For the fate of Luis Montero, cf. Pike, Service, 363, n. 62. 58 Malle, ‘Bataille’, 200. 59 Ibid. 201–2; Razola and Constante, 166. 60 Malle, ‘Maquis’, 5–6; Constante, Yo fui, 211. 61 Kodré had been serving as chief of staff in the Vienna military district (Wehrkreis XVII) when, as a result of his talking too loosely, he was implicated in the Bomb Plot and was arrested by the Gestapo two days later, on 22 July 1944 (Rauchensteiner, 404). In Jan. 1945, he was thrown into Mauthausen’s Bunker, but since he held the Iron Cross, Ziereis ordered his release and assigned him to Block 7. His presence apparently inflamed the Poles, and Ziereis decided to return him to the Bunker for his own protection. He was still there when the camp was liberated on 5 May, at which time some Poles broke into the Bunker, not to free him but to set upon him (Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 1044). 62 Dürmayer personally wanted the command to go to a German or an Austrian who could address the prisoners in German, the language best understood, and was ready to accept Kodré despite his background, but he yielded to Pirogov’s insistence (Choumoff, interview). 63 Maršálek, Geschichte, 332, 341.

5 The return of the Americans to Mauthausen 1 US 11th Armored Division, Periodic Report no. 130, 9 May 1945, compiled by Col. Edgar T.Conley, Chief of Staff to Maj. Gen. Dager, in command. 2 Bargueño and Hernández, 172. 3 ‘Kosiek may have been [my italics] in the Patrol that discovered the camp while trying to contact the Russians. I had a radio message from the Lt. in command of the patrol telling me what they had found. I told him to return and upon his return I increased the patrol and returned to the camp. Made an investigation and returned and reported findings to Div. HQ, at which time Gen. Dager ordered me to return to the camp and take command. Time lapse 6–8 hours’ (Seibel to Ray Buch, letter dated 16 Apr. 1975). Sgt. Harry Saunders comments: ‘The true story of Sgt. Kosiek and his 23 men was never printed in either of the recent US 11th Armored Division History Books. Too bad. The real true story of the liberation of Mauthausen is not very well known’ (Newsletter of the US 11th Armored Division ‘Thunderbolt’, spring 1995).

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 361

4 Choumoff, ‘Quelques’, 6. 5 Ibid. 7. The letter, sent either by General Dager or his superior, General Irwin, included an error, made earlier in Yale’s report, to the effect that ‘all records were captured intact’. The records captured intact amounted only to those which the prisoners had been able to preserve, as described above. 6 Ibid. 6. 7 Ibid. 4. 8 Maršálek, ‘Geschichte’, 334. 9 Basil A.Jackson, in Choumoff, ‘Quelques’, 3. 10 The credit for producing the banner has been given to ‘Muñoz, the camp painter’, but otherwise the painter, Maj. Eduardo Muñoz Orts, has passed entirely unnoticed in every account until now. In fact, he was highly intelligent. He was a student and actor when he was chosen by General Modesto during the Civil War to serve as his chief of staff. At Mauthausen he was employed as an industrial draftsman and cartographer. He was also an artist, and one of his pictures hung in the office of Bachmayer (Diego, interview). It now hangs in the home of Juan de Diego in Perpignan, where the author admired it. The famous photograph of the Spanish banner over the main gate has been reproduced in certain books, including some published in France, in a falsified form, with the banner deleted. The Spanish survivors’ association protested against this falsification of history (Hispania, 84, May–June 1985). 11 Saunders, interview; Choumoff, ‘Quelques’, 2–3. 12 Jean Benech, Bulletin de l’Amicale de Mauthausen, 37 (May 1954). 13 Le Chêne, 169. 14 Mauthausen, 35; cf. Borrás [Lluch], 183. An earlier SS report, drawn up on 31 Mar. 1945, showed the total prisoner population as 78 547, including 2187 Spaniards. The report was broken down into the following age groups (Le Chêne, 240A; Mauthausen, 34):

under 20 20–29 30–39 40–49 50–59 60–69 70–79

All (%) 19.2 38.4 26.6 13.0 3.0 0.38 0.006

Spaniards (%) 0.2 53.0 38.5 8.0 0.13 0.09 0.000

15 Vilanova, 122. As almost always, Vilanova provides no source reference, and his figures must be treated with reserve, but there are no others on this question. 16 Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 78. 17 Seibel, letter of 23 Aug. 1993. 18 Malle, ‘Maquis’, 204. 19 David B.Dolese, MD, private correspondence. 20 Col. Nathanial Kutcher, Mauthausen Remembered, privately printed, Miami Beach, 1994; in Gilbert, 75–6.

362 NOTES TO PP. XVI–3

21 Seibel re-enacted this scene in Ziereis’ former office at the author’s request on 8 May 1995. 22 Seibel’s dislike of Dürmayer, and his great respect for Busek and Marsik, were as strong in 1995 as in 1945. 23 Baum, 103–4; Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 1050–1. 24 Maršálek, Geschichte, 334. Juan de Diego, as always, judges it fairly: ‘If Seibel antagonized the ex-prisoners by his anticommunism, he was merely following his orders’ (interview). ‘The Americans,’ he adds, ‘behaved very well.’ Diego still wears the ‘Thunderbolt’ tunic emblem: a triangle, but pointing upward! 25 Seibel, letter of 23 Aug. 1993. 26 Seibel, deposition dated 20 May 1980. This is supported by Choumoff, ‘Quelques’, 6: ‘The ex-prisoners were disarmed on 6 May at 6 p.m.’ 27 Bargueño, interview; Bargueño and Hernández, 170. 28 García Alonso, interview. 29 Seibel, letter of 23 Aug. 1993. 30 Seibel, interview. 31 US 11th Armored Division, Periodic Report no. 129, 8 May 1945. 32 Sid Goldstein to William J.Kiefer (his jeep driver, later a lieutenant), letter of 16 Aug. 1995. 33 Malle, ‘Maquis’, 205. 34 Seibel, letter of 6 Sep. 1993. 35 Cf. Jean Benech, Bulletin de l’Amicale de Mauthausen, 37 (May 1954). 36 Seibel, letter of 6 Sep. 1993. 37 Martha Gammer, St Georgen, letter of 3 Nov. 1997. The command at Gusen was given to Keach. Promoted to lieutenant-colonel and highly praised by his superiors for his handling of the task, Keach remained there from 9 May to 6 June 1945, when the camp was closed. 38 Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 78. 39 Debrise, 185. For the photographers at work in the liberated camps, see Abzug. 40 Jean Benech, Bulletin de l’Amicale de Mauthausen, 37 (May 1954). A survivor of Dachau, the Spanish communist Francisco García Mochales, who was employed in the camp’s porcelain Kommando producing objets d’art for sale by the SS, has a similarly bitter memory of his first post-liberation experience: ‘The American soldiers gave us nothing, or nothing we could eat’ (interview). ‘The Americans gave out canned lard and corned beef,’ writes Alan Levy (67). 41 Le Caër, Cicatrices, 199. 42 Ibid. 107. Gino Valenzano (interview) agrees that the food supplied by the Americans was rich and wrong. 43 Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 1051. 44 Bargueño and Hernández, 172. 45 Malle, ‘Maquis’, 205. 46 Seibel, deposition. 47 Sid Goldstein to William J.Keifer, letter of 16 Aug. 1995. 48 Dobiáš, letter of 20 Sep. 1993. 49 In this unidentified report written in 1945, Passet reports the fate of Professor Marian Webkowski of the University of Warsaw, sent in 1943 to Gusen. 50 US 11th Armored Division, Periodic Report no. 133, 12 May 1945. 51 Part of the unidentified report mentioned above.

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 363

52 Seibel, letter of 6 Sep. 1993. 53 Martha Gammer (St Georgen, letter of 28 Sep. 1997) writes that the tip came from Polish ex-prisoners who knew the location of Ziereis’ chalet in Spital precisely because they had built it. Fabréguet (1080) states that Ziereis was living near Warschenecksberg with Gauleiter Eigruber and a certain Peterseil, a Nazi official from Langenstein. 54 Gammer (ibid.) adds that the reconnaissance party included a Polish MD. Přemysl Dobiáš is ready to give credit for locating the hideout entirely to one prisoner: the Czech Bohumil Bardon, alias Hurvinek. Dobiáš interviewed Bardon in Prague in 1994 and discovered also that Bardon was the man who buried Ziereis in Gusen on 25 May 1945 and exhumed him on 26 May for purposes of identification (Dobiáš, letter of 5 Sep. 1994). 55 Le Chêne (170–1) who states that the interrogation was conducted by Charles H.Hayes of the US CIC. Maršálek could take shorthand in German at the level of brilliance, and his account must be given the highest consideration (Dobiáš, interview). After the Liberation, during the four-Power occupation of Austria, Maršálek became a police inspector in criminal investigation in the Soviet sector of Vienna. 56 Ida Ziereis was at that time living with Gerda Müller, the wife of a major by that name, in their chalet ‘Linz’ in Pyhrn (Fabréguet, 1080). 57 Ibid. 1081. 58 Seibel, interview. 59 The accounts of Ziereis’ death and his death-bed testimony are many and varied: Tillard, Mauthausen, 76–8; ‘Ziereis parle’, Bulletin de l’Amicale de Mauthausen, 14 (Mar. 1950); 15 (May 1950); 16 (July 1950); 17 (Oct. 1950); 18 (Dec. 1950); 20 (Mar. 1951); 23 (Oct. 1951); Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 78; Baum, 129–36; Razola and Constante, 148; Vilanova, 211; Le Chêne, 171–4, 282; Borrás [Lluch], 138. Razola and Constante claim that Ziereis was executed by an American officer of Cuban origin, who took it upon himself to prevent his compatriots from ever releasing Ziereis. As for the Lagerführer’s signed statement, Baum and Le Chêne produce widely differing versions; common to both is the incoherence and vindictiveness of the statement. Among Ziereis’ more precise recollections is his account (in ‘Ziereis parle’) of sending to the Gunskirchen Nebenlager the SS doctor SS-Obersturmführer Hermann Richter, with instructions to ‘look after’ that camp’s inmates. ‘Inspired by no other motive than the desire to further science,’ Richter performed operations on several hundred inmates requiring surgery to the brain, stomach, intestines, or liver. In a special class is the account of Ziereis’ confessions (published in Turner’s World War II, 37–8) where the Lagerführer allegedly told the interrogators that ‘between one and one-and-a-half million inmates were gassed at Hartheim camp’ (sic). This ludicrous statement was said to be ‘authenticated by US Army intelligence’. The same source recounts (and this time perhaps accurately) that, according to Ziereis, there was an order to dispose of all doctors working in the camps. 60 Cinca, 125; Pappalettera, Parola, 188.

364 NOTES TO PP. XVI–3

6 Ebensee: the last liberation 1 These comprised 15 prisoners from Schlier; five from Dachau; 70 from Schlier; and four from Sachsenhausen (Freund, Arbeitslager, 458). 2 The first of 206, and the second of 214 (ibid. 458). 3 Ibid. Cf. Freund (‘Berauscht’, 80–1) where he writes of 15 906 prisoners in the last roll-call on 5 May. In Arbeitslager (416) Freund says there was no roll-call on 5 May. 4 Langbein, Resistance, 456. 5 Ibid. 457. 6 Tillard (Pain, 200) admits that he was in the Revier on the day of the last Appell. 7 Tillard, Mauthausen, 72; Laffitte, Ceux, 350. 8 Barta, diary; Laffitte, Ceux, 400; Bernadac, Jours, 266; Langbein, Résistance, 457–8; Freund, Arbeitslager, 416–18. 9 Tillard, Pain, 90–1. 10 Tillard, Mauthausen, 30; Laffitte, Ceux, 381–2. 11 Bernadac, Jours, 269. 12 Ibid. 13 Debrise, 182; Langbein, 458; Freund, Arbeitslager, 420. Roger Gouffault, a survivor of Block 2 at Ebensee, described the killing of the Ebensee Kapos to the group of historians who gathered at Mauthausen on 2 Apr. 1997. 14 Bernadac, Jours, 269, quoting Dr Wetterwald. 15 Freund, Arbeitslager, 422–3, 425. ‘The soldiers stared at us, and we at them,’ recalled a survivor (ibid. 427). 16 Tillard (Pain, 200) reports that Ganz had indeed intended to use flame-throwers to annihilate the Revier (where Tillard was lying sick); one of the two sections assigned to this operation fled to the forest, abandoning its matériel. 17 Laffitte, Ceux, 404–5; Mauthausen, 61. Gouffault (44) refers to only 40kg of explosive, which might not have been sufficient for the task. 18 Max R.García, ‘As long’, 3; cited in Freund, Arbeitslager, 425. 19 Freund, Arbeitslager, 426, 432, 435. Cf. report by Lt.-Col. Francis R.Sandford, commanding US 30th Field Hospital, Ebensee, 13 May 1945, in Le Chêne (236–8). 20 Freund, Arbeitslager, 429. 21 Bernadac, Jours, 271. 22 Laffitte, Ceux, 407. 23 Bernadac, Jours, 271–2. 24 Poltrum was much admired by the survivors. After the Liberation he was imprisoned by the Allies for being found in SS uniform, and it was two years before Tillard and his friends heard of it. They promptly raised an international outcry to free him, and they succeeded, but Poltrum died in 1951, unemployed. The Bulletin de l’Amicale de Mauthausen paid honour to him at his death. 25 Havez was allegedly so dogmatic a Stalinist that he was unacceptable to the majority. In any event, he was able to leave for Paris the same day. 26 Freund, Arbeitslager, 424–41, passim. 27 Max R.García, ‘As long’, 18 et seq.; cited in Freund, Arbeitslager, 445. 28 US 11th Armored Division, ‘After Action’, June 1945.

7 The American-Soviet link-up

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 365

1 The very first American to meet the Soviet patrol was Technician 4th Grade Frank H.Johnson of Reno, Nevada. 2 Rauchensteiner, 382. 3 Maršálek, 336–7. 4 Seibel, deposition. Stalin’s treatment of liberated Soviet prisoners is no longer disputed. ‘In 1945 they were transferred automatically from the Nazi camps to those of the Gulag,’ announced the Russian historian Aleksandr N.Yakovlev (French-German TV Channel Arte, 17 July 1993).

8 The final German surrender 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13

Bradley, 433. Rauchensteiner, 374. Ibid. Maj. Dominic J.Caraccilo, July 1997, unidentified source. Rauchensteiner, 382. Seibel, interview. It was Seibel who first received Dircks and took him to Dager’s headquarters. US 11th Armored Division, Periodic Report no. 129, 8 May 1945. Rauchensteiner, 379. Dietrich was captured by US troops on 12 May 1945. He was subsequently tried and sentenced to life imprisonment, but was released in 1959. Rauchensteiner, 358–9. Langbein, Résistance, 456. Maršálek, Geschichte, 334. When ‘Thunderbolt’s CC-A set up its brigade headquarters in Steyr, its 42nd Tank Battalion was given control of the former Steyr Nebenlager. Lt. Gen. Geoffrey Keyes, commanding the IInd Corps, arrived to inspect it. The American battalion commander lined the general’s inspection route with captured SS troops in platoon formation, all stripped to the waist to sharpen their perception of their new and altered status. Procès Evers-Adler, 3; ‘Historique sur Aurigny’, Amicale des Anciens Déportés de l’ile anglo-normande d’Aurigny (Alderney), Paris; Packe and Dreyfus, 59; Cruickshank, 203; Steckoll, 180, 182; Bonnard, 86; Bunting, 280, 284–5. Ruaux shows convincingly that the British Government has not yet opened all its archives on the Channel Islands, and the full history of the Channel Islands under German occupation still remains to be written.

9 Punishment and impunity for the SS criminals 1 Persico, 239. Their daughter Gudrun Himmler became Gudrun Burwitz, a Munich housewife with three children who is nevertheless an activist in the organization known as Stille Hilfe für Kriegsgefangene und Internierte, which in the past gave help to Klaus Barbie of the Lyon Gestapo and to Martin Sommer, the ‘Hangman of Buchenwald’, and continues to support a Protestant old people’s home in Pullach, near Munich.

366 NOTES TO PP. XVI–3

2 ‘The last days of Ernst Kaltenbrunner.’ 3 Calvocoressi, interview. Calvocoressi, who had served in the war in RAF Intelligence, was sent to Nuremberg not as a prosecutor but as an intelligence officer, on behalf of the Joint Intelligence Committee of the Allied Chiefs of Staff, headquartered in Washington, DC. His mission was to find out if the Nazi leaders had acquired any knowledge of Ultra, the Allied fear now being that the great secret could become known to the Soviets. Calvocoressi concluded, from his questioning of Kaltenbrunner, as head of the RSHA, that the Germans had reached the end of the war without learning of the secret. 4 Persico, 84. 5 ‘On our arrival we were greeted by an orchestra made up of young and pretty girls wearing white blouses and blue skirts. They played Offenbach and Lehar (I remember The Merry Widow), while the SS decided if we were going straight to the gas chamber or if we would be worked to death…. The SS might run out of Zyklon-B. The solution on such occasions was to throw the little children alive into the furnace.’ The moment may be proper for disclosing that my former prefacer, the late Pierre Bertaux, de Gaulle’s Commissaire de la République and later Director General of the Sûreté Nationale, and therefore politically at right-angles with the woman who married the head of the French Communist Party, responded, at the moment the author showed him a photograph of the lady, that this was the woman whom he had once hoped to marry. 6 Trial, vol. VI, 185–6. Shirer (955) describes them as ‘American, British, and Dutch flyers’. Only one was American, the Dutchman born in the United States. 7 Bernadac, Jours, 218. 8 Grau died in 1991. In a letter dated 15 June 1965, Grau wrote that Pointner hid the package in her cellar, which is untrue; it is possible that Pointner did not reveal the hiding place even to the boys. Grau adds that the package contained only negatives; we know that Antonio García kept only prints, but it is quite possible that Boix helped himself to negatives in the Erkennungsdienst. Grau also explains that the three Spaniards then requisitioned the photo shop in Mauthausen village where Boix could print the negatives. This letter was reproduced in an article signed ‘Luisin’, the pseudonym of the communist stalwart Luis García Manzano who, even 20 years later, preferred not to be associated with what he wrote (Le Patriote résistant, supplement to no. 426, Apr. 1975). 9 SS-Hauptsturmführer Adolf Zutter to US Capt. A.J.Hackl, Polizeigefängnis Linz, 2 Aug. 1945 (Bundesarchiv Berlin, 1169/98/4 NS 4 Ma/vorl 56). 10 Persico, 238. 11 Le Patriote résistant, supplement to no. 426, Apr. 1975. Dubost expressed his concern about holding the witnesses ‘unnecessarily’, pointing out that the train journey Nuremberg-Paris took 30 hours (Dubost, 146). 12 Concerning one occasion in 1943, Boix declared: ‘After developing the film, I made five prints of each negative, and these were sent, with the negative, to Berlin’ (Dubost, 153). If Kaltenbrunner’s counsel Ludwig Babel had prepared his brief, he could have torn this testimony to pieces. 13 Ricken is given as ‘Ricker, a teacher from Essen’ (Dubost, 142, 146), described first as Oberscharführer (143) then as Unterscharführer (145). Kornacz is presented as ‘Kornacq, killed in Holland by the Americans in 1944’ (143).

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 367

14 The credit for placing Speer at Mauthausen and in contact with Himmler is attributed to the research of Harriet Zetterberg, who duly took her place at the prosecution table (Persico, 239). 15 Le Patriote résistant, supplement to no. 426, Apr. 1975. According to Persico (238–9) Boix recognized Speer in 36 shots, and added: ‘Afterward, I had to write his name and the date on the print.’ 16 Varaut, 260. 17 It was in a salt-mine at Altaussee that some 18 000 works of art, stolen by the Nazis, had been stored. 18 Cf. Pike, ‘Reflections’, 182. 19 Cf. Pike, Latin, iii. 83, 100, 148. 20 Opera San Rafaelle remains active, with an office in the United States at 911 East 185th Street, Cleveland, Ohio 44119 (telephone: 692.1700). 21 Beate and Serge Klarsfeld, private information; Wiesenthal (74–5) cites the importance to Rauff, in his escape from the camp at Rimini, of the Austrian bishop Alois Hudal, who was rector of Santa Maria dell’Anima, the German Roman Catholic foundation in Piazza Navona in Rome. The account by John Loftus (cf. Pike, Service, 276), to the effect that the Vatican’s contribution to helping the Nazis was minimal and that the food, shelter and identity cards it provided to Rauff was no more than it would provide to any other refugee, fails to persuade and has been challenged by sources in the US Office of Special Investigations (US Department of Justice). It should not be overlooked that while Pope Pius XII excommunicated communists he did not excommunicate Nazis, not even in March 1940 when he condemned the National-Socialist movement. Bishop Hudal regretted nothing, writing in his memoirs: ‘I thank God that He [allowed me] to visit and comfort many victims in their prisons and concentration camps and [to help] them escape with false identity papers…. I felt duty bound after 1945 to devote my whole charitable work mainly to former National Socialists and Fascists, especially to so-called “war criminals”’ (Hudal, 21; cited in Aarons and Loftus, 37). The acquiescence of such prelates in the fascist cause prompted Pope JohnPaul II to issue a papal letter on 14 Nov. 1994 in which he recognized ‘the obligation of the Church to express profound regret for the weakness of so many of her sons and daughters who sullied her face’. Among matters still to be revealed is the substance of the meeting on 10 May 1944 between Pope Pius XII and SS-Obergruppenführer Wolff. 22 BBC Panorama, 18 June 1979. 23 Constante, Yo fui, 293. Přemysl Dobiáš was equally embittered by his experience at the Dachau trial. When he discovered that Otto Kleingunther was among those in custody awaiting trial, he asked and obtained permission to confront him in his cell. The two men recognized each other at once. Kleingunther winked, imagining that Dobiáš would help him. When that approach failed, Kleingunther declared that he had never set foot in Mauthausen. Dobiáš, who was witness to over 100 murders committed by Kleingunther in the Revier, found that his testimony was insufficient unless it was corroborated. While Josef Klat and Francesco Otero could have provided theirs, the US prosecuting authorities refused to pay their expenses, with the result that Kleingunther was acquitted (Dobiáš, interview). 24 For some time after the war it was common for the villagers of Mauthausen to discover in the local woods the elaborate hiding places used by the SS to store their

368 NOTES TO PP. XVI–3

25

26 27 28

29 30

31

32

33

34 35 36 37 38 39

stolen treasures, and it was known that the same SS, if still at large, came back to recover them. Some Kapos too had amassed fortunes. Karl, the Oberkapo in the Revier at Ebensee, had three kg of gold in his bags when they were seized on 6 May 1945; the gold had been extracted from the teeth of the dead (Tillard, Mauthausen, 63). Among the attempts made to evade a guilty verdict is that of Ziereis’ adjutant, Adolf Zutter, who signed his sworn statement in front of US Capt. A.J.Hackl in prison in Linz on 2 Aug. 1945. It did him no good. He was hanged at Dachau on 27 May 1947. That of SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans Altfuldisch, who had served from autumn 1944 as Bachmayer’s adjutant, or 2nd Schutzschaftlagerführer. Pappalettera, Parola, 45, 48, 88, 235–6. When arrested, Bentele (like Eigruber) was dressed in Trachtenanzug, the native costume of Austria. Throwing himself at his captors’ feet, he implored mercy: ‘I have a wife and children, I obeyed orders, don’t kill me, gentlemen!’ (Le Caër, Cicatrices, 110). Pappalettera, Parola, 51, 200–3. Cf. Pike, Service, 331 n. 203. Ibid. 202–4. Streitwieser had previously gone on trial on 31 July 1963 (Tillion, 419), but without result, and he had been allowed short periods of release (Pappalettera, Parola, 204). Pappalettera, Parola, 75; Maršálek, Geschichte, 200. Maršálek gives the date of Schulz’s arrest (perhaps his re-arrest) as 13 Mar. 1956, and his pseudonym at that time as Schulze. Curiously, document GK0808 in the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich gives Schulze as his real name, recorded as such at his trial (Martina Schröck, private correspondence). But cf. the entries for Schulz below (Annexes I and II), based on SS and other primary sources. Packe and Dreyfus, 54. Bunting (298) challenges this. Both Karl Hoffmann and Schwalm, she writes, were taken prisoner in the Channel Islands by the British. Hoffmann was released in 1948 without having stood trial. He returned to Germany and died in Hamburg in 1974. It is possible that the Hoffmann hanged in Kiev was Johann of the OT. Ruaux, 181. List lived undisturbed in a village near Hamburg until his death in the 1980s. Klebeck was captured in June 1945 and tried by a British court in Germany in 1947, but on charges relating to crimes committed in Germany after he left Alderney in 1944. He was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment, and released in 1952. Puhr, the commandant of Sylt, was executed in East Germany in 1963 (Bunting, 294, 297, 299–302). Procès Evers-Adler, 3, 39, 42, 98, 100. He was sentenced by an SS court martial to 15 years’ imprisonment, but Himmler quashed the sentence (Fabréguet, ‘Mauthausen’, 1089). Pappalettera, Parola, 189. Wormser-Gigot (255) is in error. Jentsch was sentenced in 1968 to be hanged, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment (Pappalettera, Parola, 191; Maršálek, Geschichte, 347). Freund (Arbeitslager, 318) who gives his name only as Angel Q. Pappalettera, Parola, 81; Jean Laffitte, Mauthausen: Bulletin, 164 (Jan. 1973). Cf. Tillion (406) for her reference to Fassel. Martin Roth, the Kommandoführer of the crematorium, did not go on trial (in Hagen, West Germany) until 1972, the trial ending on 3 Nov. (ibid.).

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 369

40 Paul Tillard, Bulletin de l’Amicale de Mauthausen, 130 (July 1966); Pappalettera, Parola, 231; Nachrichten aus Bayern, 31 Oct. 1972; Bayerischer Überblick, 3 Nov. 1972; Mauthausen: Bulletin, 270 (Mar. 1997), which gives Ganz’s date of death as 9 Oct. 1974. 41 So too did Antonio García, who also gave evidence, and in German. The West German authorities offered him a bodyguard, to protect him from Nazi sympathizers, but he declined. (This testimony by Antonio García was given to the author on 28 Feb. 1997, at a time when his memory had failed; he remembered that he had attended two of the follow-up trials after Nuremberg and gave evidence at both, but retains no memory of his testimony.) 42 Pappalettera, Parola, 82, 84, 211, 222. 43 Not even Schloss Hartheim was exempted from the resolve in certain quarters to forget. As early as 20 Aug. 1949, a group of 60 visitors from France wanted to honour the Nazis’ victims by a few minutes of silent prayer, only to find their ceremony blasted by the noise of a wedding party that had booked the castle (Horwitz, 171). 44 The preservation, thanks to Juan de Diego, of the Unnatürliche Todesfätte, enabled the US Department of Justice to strip two former SS guards at Mauthausen of their US citizenship. The second of these cases, involving the Romanian-born SS-Schütze Martin Bartesch who had served at Mauthausen in 1943–4, became a cause célèbre. Bartesch had emigrated to the United States in 1955 and had been granted citizenship in 1966. In May 1987 Bartesch, then 61-years-old, was working as a janitor in Chicago when the US authorities denaturalized him but allowed him to avoid legal proceedings by returning to Austria. The Austrian authorities expressed their indignation that Bartesch should be returned to Austria, but no one spoke of putting Bartesch on trial. Among the tiny number of these former SS who were returned were Michael Schmidt and Mathias Denuel. Schmidt, a retired janitor in Lincolnwood, Illinois, admitted to being a former concentration camp guard and was stripped of his US citizenship in 1990; in Jan. 1993 he voluntarily left the United States for Austria, agreeing never to return. Denuel, a former guard at Gusen, arrived in the United States in 1955, worked as a tailor in Philadelphia, retired to Florida, and was deported to Germany on 25 Apr. 1994. Since its birth in 1981, the US Office of Special Investigations has extradited 48 alleged Nazi war criminals of whom only four have been tried, two in Germany, one in Yugoslavia, and one in Israel. The dwindling list of hunted Nazi criminals had by 1990 moved Dr Heribert (‘Aribert’) Ferdinand Heim to virtually its top position. Heim, of Schloss Hartheim infamy, opened a practice after the war as a gynaecologist in Mannheim. After marrying a colleague, he moved his practice to Baden-Baden. Not until 1962 was an arrest warrant issued against him, on the strength of numerous denunciations, but when the police arrived to arrest him he had disappeared. It was later discovered that Heim owned a large residential building in Berlin with 30 apartments (cf. Pike, Service, 374). The proceeds from the rental of these apartments were protected by Heim’s Frankfurt attorney, Fritz Steinacker. In 1993 it was reported that Heim had died that year of cancer in Argentina—in poverty. But doubt remained. 45 Allen Cowell, The New York Times, 3 Aug. 1996. 46 The total of 102876 given by Borrás ([Lluch], 183) is based on officially recorded deaths; of this total, 36 295 prisoners (or more than a third) died in the first four months of 1945. The monument to the dead of Mauthausen, unveiled on 20 June

370 NOTES TO PP. XVI–3

1947 at the time the Soviet Army transferred custody of the camp to the Austrian authorities, provides the following breakdown by nationality:

Soviets Polish Hungarians Yugoslavs French Spaniards Italians Czechs Greeks Germans Belgians Austrians Dutch Americans Luxemburgers British Other TOTAL

32 180 30 203 12 923 12 890 8203 6503 5750 4473 3700 1500 742 235 77 34 19 17 3319 122 767

Juan de Diego (responsible for the register of deaths) emphatically rejects these estimates, insisting that if all deaths are included, especially those of prisoners who were sent to Mauthausen for immediate execution or who were evacuated there in 1944–5 without, in either case, receiving KL-M matriculation (including the Soviet prisoners of war for whom Blocks 16–19 were transformed), the total runs up to 200 000: ‘the only precise records were those of the crematorium Kommando, and those records were all destroyed by the SS’ (interview). Wilhelm Ornstein, in his ‘Krematorium’ report, provides figures based on his memory but they are in no way comprehensive. Even if the crematorium’s records had been preserved, it would still be necessary to add to the total those thousands who were buried in mass graves or were left unburied. Today, in the field to the north of the Lager, in the vicinity of the Tent Camp and in the area where the ashes from the crematorium were disposed, a small and lonely plaque, engraved in German, French and Russian, stands as a testimonial to those who died unknown: ‘…The prisoners held in the Tent Camp were not registered. The administration archives therefore cannot provide either the number of the prisoners or the number of the dead.’

Epilogue 1 ‘To forget the evil done is to allow it to be repeated.’ Inscription on the monument at Mauthausen to the Greeks who died there.

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 371

2 Daix, interview. Nor for that matter, Daix adds, did the Ministry know where the French Army was in Austria. Cf. Daix, J’ai Cru, 141. 3 Kennington, interview. 4 By the end of 1997, Germany had spent more than $58 billion in reparations to the victims of Nazi persecution. Of the 700 000 visitors now passing each year through the gates of Dachau, 350 000 are Germans, many of them schoolchildren. 5 Boüard, ‘Mauthausen’, 78. 6 Bargueño (interview) remembers receiving from another prisoner a photograph that belonged to him. 7 Cf. Pike, Service, 279, 374. 8 Martha Gammer, St Georgen, letters of 28 Sep. and 3 Nov. 1997. 9 Mauthausen: Bulletin, 176, June 1975. Among those attending was the Soviet lieutenant Ilya Kamenkovich, a writer who later produced an account of Mauthausen entitled This Cannot be Forgotten. 10 Valade, interview. 11 Daix, interview. 12 García Alonso, interview. 13 The Spaniard Juan Fernández, who had worked for three years in the Gusen quarry, chose not only to remain in Austria, marry an Austrian and have a family but also to continue working in the Gusen quarry! He and some other Spanish survivors formed a co-operative, making a modest living from extracting and shaping the granite. Pappalettera (Passerai, 161–2) who discovered him there in his work, names Gabriel Aranda and Benito Gonzáles among ‘hundreds’ of other Spaniards who continued to live in Austria and Germany. 14 Kurt Waldheim, who became Secretary-General of the United Nations and President of Austria, is simply the most famous of those prominent Austrians who concealed, with greater or less success, their Nazi past. Friedrich Peter, who became head of the Austrian Freedom Party, spoke only of having fought in a tank unit; Wiesenthal revealed that he served in the SS, at least until early 1943. Even the University of Vienna was slow to examine its role under Nazi domination. Only on 1 Oct. 1998 was it revealed that its Faculty of Medicine engaged in research on bodies provided by the SS. The remains of nearly 1400 victims of Nazi courts were delivered to the institute of anatomy for dissection. 15 In one sense, Austria had indeed been a victim. The Nazi destruction of moral values, including the sanction of acts of terrorism and the bearing of children out of wedlock, had produced in Austria by 1947 the highest rate of juvenile delinquency in all of Europe. Such delinquents became known as Schlürfe: aged from 12 to 16 at the end of the war, they had taken the place of elder siblings called up for war service, had avoided school and work, and lived from petty crime. 16 Horwitz, 182. 17 As one who taught European history to German students in the 1960s and the 1970s, the author can attest to the near-total ignorance even of intelligent young Germans of that generation concerning the Third Reich and the Second World War. One of them asked what happened after Germany’s victory in the Battle of Britain. Others asked if there were non-Jews in the concentration camps. 18 Hackett, 14. 19 Owner of the Taverne, Mauthausen, interview.

372 NOTES TO PP. XVI–3

20 The Austrian film producer Andreas Gruber had a similar experience in his hometown Wels, where a Jewish woman from Lvov who had survived three SS camps told him that she never spoke of her background: ‘If I were to say that I was Jewish and a Kazettler, my life in Wels would be unendurable’ (interview). 21 Martha Gammer, St Georgen, letter of 3 Nov. 1997. 22 García Alonso, interview. 23 Dr William G.Niederland, an American psychoanalyst who died in Englewood, New Jersey, in Aug. 1993, was probably the first to formulate, from his observa tions of former death-camp inmates, the ‘survivor-syndrome’ as a distinct medical condition. His study, based on contact with 2000 survivors of catastrophies, was first published in 1961 and listed the symptoms: insomnia, recurrent nightmares, personality changes, chronic depressive states, memory lapses, psychosomatic ailments, and relentless anxiety. 24 García Barrado, interview. 25 As prisoners at Mauthausen, the Sempere brothers had been fortunate to be assigned to the village garage (see above). 26 Martina Schröck, 69, citing Manuel García Barrado. Some Spaniards stayed in St Georgen after the war, married local girls, and are buried there (Martha Gammer, St Georgen, letter of 3 Nov. 1997). 27 Schröck, 69. 28 Diego, interview. 29 García Alonso, interview. 30 Cf. Miguel Serra, Mauthausen: Bulletin, 195, April 1979. Climent lived the remainder of his life in Fresnes, famous for its prison. 31 Diego, interview. 32 Razola and Constante, 177. 33 Chozas, interview. 34 Bargueño and Hernández, 175. Bargueño maintained this version of events even under intense questioning (interview). 35 Cf. Pike, Service, 280. 36 Bargueño, interview. 37 Nates and Santísteban, interview. Only Antonio García, whom Verge truly helped, remembers him kindly. No survivor has produced any clear evidence concerning the role of the German Red Cross, but the arrest of Haefliger by the Spaniards in Mauthausen village on the night of 5–6 May 1945 can be understood only in terms of the disdain they felt for the German Red Cross, and perhaps for the CICR in general. The CICR can always argue that its very function forced it to remain neutral in the war, but its failure, until very late in the war, to reveal what it knew to be the reality of the SS concentration camps—or to give much help to the prisoners—was finally exposed on 18 Dec. 1996, when the CICR released for the first time 25 000 pages of its wartime files. The CICR still insisted that it had been powerless to speak out against Nazi crimes, but when asked why it had taken more than 50 years for the information to be revealed, Georges Willemin, the CICR archivist, replied: ‘Because it takes time to face up to your own history’ (Irvin Molotsky, The New York Times, 19 Dec. 1996). 38 Bargueño and Mme Bargueño, interview; Diego, interview. In his book, Bargueño refers to Verge only as ‘Ramón from Hospitalet’, but only because when he wrote the book he had already forgotten Verge’s name, and has retained no records of the legal

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 373

proceedings. Juan de Diego once again provided me with the identity, but has no records of the case either. Santísteban, president of FEDIP, told me that Verge escaped judgement ‘because the communists protected him’. 39 Cf. Pike, Jours, 119–32; Pike, Service, 202–3. 40 Franco’s lack of humanity towards his defeated compatriots requires no recounting, but a fresh example can be given. Pedro Moncín Lara was a Spanish centrist (Partido Republicano) who had fought on the Republican side, entered France, was taken prisoner and arrived in KL-Mauthausen in March 1941. (Mariano Constante mentions him in his work, but misspells his name Monzín.) There he died, on 2 July 1942, after his family had received two letters from him in 1941–2. But no word was received either from the German or the Spanish authorities that he was dead. In 1946 the family contacted the CICR in Geneva (indirectly, it should be stated, as Franco’s Spain was not without its censors), and only then did it learn, from the death lists in the CICR’s possession, that Moncín Lara was indeed dead. That, however, was not sufficient for the Franco authorities: more details were required. ‘No es Vd. viuda sin pruebas,’ some faceless bureaucrat intoned; ‘necesita dos testigos’ (You’re not a widow unless you prove it. You need two witnesses). This myrmidon of Franco’s, dressed in his finery beneath the sepia portrait of the Caudillo and swollen in his arrogance, required, presumably, that Spatzenegger, who had smashed Moncín’s head against a rock, and Ricken, who had photographed the ‘attempt to escape’, produce affidavits to the effect that Moncín was dead. Moncín’s son, Pedro Moncín Cortés, of Pradilla de Ebro (Saragossa), comes across as a serious, affable and transparently honest man, an impression which the author formed well before Moncín Cortés told him that he was in contact with Mariano Constante and had no confidence in him. At the 1995 reunion at Mauthausen, Moncín Cortés expressed his disgust with what he heard in front of the Spanish monument at Mauthausen. The Catalans were claiming it as their own. Oblivious to everyone around them who was not Catalan, their leader announced: ‘Franco was right. We Catalans were stateless. The blue triangle was just right for us.’ Moncín Cortés told the author how much it sickened him: ‘At Mauthausen we were a community of Spaniards. This is the last place on earth for Spaniards to argue regionalization’ (Moncín, interview). The final note on this matter should be that the monarchy that followed Franco’s demise, through the democratic governments which accompanied it, together with the compensation, albeit late, that the survivors received from the German Government, allowed those ex-prisoners still alive to live their final years in decency and repose. As for the survivors of the 40 000 members of the International Brigades who fought for the Republic (of whom about a half died in Spain), some 300 were still alive on 13 Dec. 1995 when the Spanish Government announced they were to be granted Spanish citizenship. 41 The Czech Dobiáš remained in contact with the Pole Cyrankiewicz (who had taken his post as Blockschreiber 3 in the Revier) and visited Warsaw at his invitation. When later Dobiáš’ mother died in Prague, he applied to the Czechoslovak Embassy in London for permission to attend her burial, and was refused permission. Dobiáš had broken contact with Cyrankiewicz for political reasons, but now he wrote to him for the first time, and in fury: ‘What was the point of our struggle, why did we insist so much on saving human decency, when now things like this can happen?’ Three weeks later a registered letter arrived from the Czechoslovak Embassy: he was granted

374 NOTES TO PP. XVI–3

42 43 44 45 46

47

48 49 50 51 52 53

54 55 56 57

permission to visit Czechoslovakia without any restriction (Dobiáš, letter of 19 Aug. 1993). No one in the Secretariat of FEDIP knows the date of the handover, or even the year. It is a testimony to the association’s idea of archival control. Antonio García to Mariano Constante, n.p., n.d., 26. Regards (Paris), new series 12, 1 July 1945. Ce Soir (Paris), 1 Aug. 1945. Another source of help in the recovery of the photos were the Austrian-Czechs Vilém Stašek and Josef Klat. It was they who in May 1975 provided Prem Dobiáš with his collection. Having known Mme Odette Janvier as long as I have known Antonio García, I should like to bear witness to her courage, mental and physical endurance (she is highly active and over 90), and absolute moral integrity. As a member of the PCF, Odette Janvier was in the group opposed to the policy forced upon the Party by Stalin in Aug. 1939 and again in June 1940 (cf. Pike, ‘Communistes’, 73–4; Pike, ‘Between’, passim). Early in the Occupation she was arrested as a result of an accident. Jean Catelas had asked her to purchase a radio. She took a receipt, because Catelas was responsible for the accounts. When Catelas fell into the hands of the police, the markings on the receipt allowed the Gestapo to reach her. She was taken first to the ‘Souricière’ (equally known as the ‘Dépôt’) at the Ministry of Justice, and from there to La Santé, to join Catelas. The Germans allowed them to talk just before they beheaded him, after which his body was given to his family for burial in Amiens while Odette Janvier was sent from La Santé via Fresnes and Rennes to KL-Ravensbrück. The disclosures in 1995 by the PCF itself of the duplicity and moral turpitude of Jacques Duclos as head of the PCF was the culmination of everything she feared was true: ‘André Marty had the character of a pig, but he was never a traitor, as the Party claimed when they ousted him. But Duclos was something else, a liar to the core. He wasn’t in Paris at the beginning of the war. He had taken refuge in Belgium. What was ever true about what he claimed?’ (interview). Daix, interview. Boix died in Barcelona in July 1951. ‘Historia de unas fotos’, Le Patriote résistant (Paris), special supplement in Spanish to 426, Apr. 1975. Mauthausen, L’Amicale de Mauthausen, Paris, videofilm, 1995. Juan de Diego, interview, expressed his disgust: ‘Constante had nothing to do with the photos.’ García Barrado, interview. Santísteban, interview. Cf. Pike, Service, 282, for further evidence of Pasionaria’s doublespeak. The Party prefers to praise the dead. Miguel Serra wrote of Manuel Bonet, a mason from Sant Sadumi d’Anoia near Barcelona who had served as an officer in the Republican Army and finished up in Mauthausen. There he died of tuberculosis on 10 June 1943, having refused to accept the food supplement offered him by the Spanish organization; on the contrary, he told them not to waste their precious supplies on someone beyond hope, and even offered them his own food ration (Le Patriote résistant, Paris, special supplement in Spanish to 426, Apr. 1975). Antonio García to Mariano Constante, n.p., n.d., 27–9. Cf. Pike, Jours, 226–9. Ibid. 229. Antonio García to Mariano Constante, n.p., n.d., 21.

NOTES TO PP. 4–7 375

58 Ibid. 22. 59 Cortés, interview. In Perpignan, the author then discussed the four questions privately with Juan de Diego, who agreed that the four resolve into one: Were the photos ‘saved’ by Boix or were they simply stolen? In support of Boix and Cortés, we agreed that the photos could have been lost for ever: when a prisoner goes into the Revier he is not likely to come out alive. We further agreed that the second and third questions lacked merit, while the fourth remained open. The author then left for a conference in Murcia but with an invitation from Cortés to stop in Perpignan on his return. But the two-hour talk had tired or troubled him, and the second meeting never took place. 60 García Alonso, interview. 61 Ibid. 62 Waysand, interview. 63 Constante, interview. 64 Ibid. 65 Schröck, 94–5. 66 Cortés disputes even this: ‘At the beginning of 1945 we were dispersed, with some of us sent to Linz, others to Eferding (west of Linz), and others anywhere in Austria’ (Schröck, 95). 67 Drexler, interviews; Martina Schröck, Schardenberg, letter of 29 May 1997.

Annex I Konzentrationslager Mauthausen Bewachungsmannschaften und besuchende SS

Guide to rank abbreviations

ANNEXES 377

378 ANNEXES

ANNEXES 379

380 ANNEXES

ANNEXES 381

382 ANNEXES

ANNEXES 383

384 ANNEXES

ANNEXES 385

386 ANNEXES

ANNEXES 387

388 ANNEXES

ANNEXES 389

390 ANNEXES

ANNEXES 391

392 ANNEXES

ANNEXES 393

Annex II List of members of KL-Mauthausen Kommandantur and Gestapo office

Original list compiled by an unknown prisoner employed in the Gestapo office

Annex III SS list of the prisoners employed in KL-Mauthausen’s Gestapo office on 21 March 1945

Annex IV List of the 47 Allied agents murdered on 6–7 September 1944

Dutch

ANNEXES 397

British

The information is based on two sources: the British Ministry of Defence, and the Mauthausen register of incoming prisoners. The former provides the correct name, the rank, and the branch of service, and I am indebted to the late Mr Gordon Adams for his painstaking work over many years in obtaining this information. The names in the Mauthausen register were written in Gothic script, presumably by Hans Maršálek. Two mistakes were made: Bloomie for Bloom, and Georges for George Clement.

Annex V The 11 Soviets who are known to have survived to the Liberation after the break-out of the 419 in February 1945

1 Baklanov, Ivan 2 Bitukov, Ivan 3 Dorofeyev, Vladimir 4 Mikheienkov, Aleksandr 5 Riabchinsky, Michka 6 Serdiuk, Ivan 7 Shakov, Semjon 8 Sossedko, Vladimir 9 Tchepetia, Vladimir 10 Ukrainzev, Viktor 11 Zemkalo, Nikolaï

Annex VI Waffen-SS Divisions in Heeresgruppe Ostmark April–May 1945

400

Annex VII US Third Army as at 1 May 1945

402

Annex VIII The 64 men who liberated Gusen and Mauthausen

US THIRD ARMY 11th Armored Division (‘Thunderbolt’) Combat Command B 41st Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, Mech. D Troop: Lt. Robert F.Larkins (not present) 1st Platoon: S/Sgt Albert J.KOSIER BAILEY, Robert O. BRUSH, James E. CALDERON CUBAT, Adam J. GERONIMI, Charles A. GOODWIN, Robert F. HECHEL, George R. (Cpl) JOHNSON, Melvin L. (Cpl) KEMP, Dennis J. (Sgt) PELTON, Reith W. PICKETT, William S. (Cpl) ROSENTHAL, Albert Jerome SAUNDERS, Harry C. (Sgt) SCHUSTER, Daniel F. SELLERS, Ernest L. SLATTON, John L. SLOAN, Lester H. (Cpl) STARK, Marvin TALBOT,JamesT. (Sgt) WARREN, James B. (Sgt) ZARNOWSRI, Edmond J. One replacement: Name unknown

Combat Command A 55th Armored Infantry Battalion A Company: 2nd Lt. Henry B.Kieling (not present) 3rd Platoon Patrol Leader: S/Sgt Leander W.HENS 3rd Rifle Squad: HENS BERNSTEIN, Leonard EMERY, Arland FELDMAN, Edward GOULD, Harold K. KNIGHTEN, Charles G. LARIBEE, Nelson MITCHELL, Donald W. PAOLONE, Peter PENNONI, Amerigo SOLOMON, George (Cpl) STORDAHL, Ray STREBECR, Arlie V. Three replacements: Names unknown 2nd Rifle Squad: S/Sgt BERGH ALLEGRETTO, Edward FETROW, Charles H. (Sgt) FLYNN, John NIX, Francis PARRIS, Ralph SHORT, William

Edward

404

Five replacements: Names unknown Machine-Gun Squad: S/Sgt Robert SELLERS CALHOUN, Gale H. (Cpl) CROUCH, Charlie D. FREY, Louis B. HALL, Horace JACRSON, Joseph Wahoo KISSEL, Frank (Sgt) MARTIN, Jack A US infantry platoon is divided into five MEYER, Richard J. squads, each under a staff-sergeant; in this operation of 5 May 1945, only three squads of the 3rd Platoon were sent out. A US cavalry platoon is much smaller and is not divided into squads. PIKE, James S. RIENSTRA, Conrad SHARP, Lester L. SURETTE, Raymond

Bibliography

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C Video Films ‘Action K’, Bernhard Bamberger and Andreas Gruber. Linz: Provinz Film, 1994. ‘The Art of Remembrance: Simon Wiesenthal’, Johanna Heer and Werner Schmiedel. Vienna and New York: ORF/River Lights Pictures, 1995. Diego, Juan de, nine hours of video recording by the Fondation de l’Amicale de Mauthausen (Paris), conducted in his home in Perpignan on 17–18 May 1994. ‘England Spiel’, Archiefmateriaal RVD, Filmmuseum RIOD. Produktie Marianne Entius, Jeannet de Boer. NCRV, Amsterdam, 1980, 1995. ‘Entre el sufrimiento y la esperanza: Juan de Diego’, Montserrat Roig. Barcelona: TVE/Sant Cugat, 1984. ‘Les Îles anglo-normandes’, Paris: Fondation de l’Amicale de Mauthausen, 1986.

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Index

Abbreviations in the index are as follows: Belg. (Belgian); Br. (British); Bulg. (Bulgarian), Cz. (Czech); Fr. (French); Ger. (German); Hung. (Hungarian), It. (Italian), Lux. (Luxemburger); Pol. (Polish); Sov. (Soviet); Sp. (Spanish); Swe. (Swedish), US (American), Yug. (Yugoslav). Abramov, Boris (Sov. KZ prisoner) 183–4, 360 Abwehr see Wehrmacht Ackermann, Leo (OT officer) 6 Adam (Pol. KZ prisoner) 179 Adam, August (Austrian Green Oberkapo) 60–1, 331 Adelantado Andreu, Juan (Sp. KZ prisoner) 347 Adler, OT-Haupttruppführer Adam 7, 279, 289, 290, 315 Aichberger (Mauthausen pharmacist) 328 ‘Al Capone’ (Kapo) 65 Alamán, Manolo (Sp. KZ prisoner) 126 Albertini, Francesco (It. KZ prisoner) 354 Alberto (Sp. interpreter at Mauthausen) 45, 46 Albrecht, Duke of Bavaria (held hostage) 329 Alcubierre Pérez, José (Sp. KZ prisoner) 311 Alderney (Channel Islands) xiii, 3, 4, 5–8, 279, 289–90, 382 Alfaya, Javier (Sp. historian) 71, 323 Allen, Charles R.Jr. (American historian) 285 Allied air attacks 155–6, 171, 190, 193–4 Allied parachutists 185 Allied prisoners (of war), murdered at Mauthausen 142, 161–4, 282, 292, 355 Allied propaganda 159 Allied War Crimes Commission 188

Altfuldisch, SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans Michael 131, 132, 355, 382 Alvarez, Rafael (Sp. KZ prisoner) 318 Amat Piniella, José (Sp. KZ prisoner and author) 71, 335 Amelung (Ger. Green Kapo) 364 Americans see United States Army Amstetten (camp) 320 Andrés, Emilio (PCE commissar and KZ prisoner) 111 Angeli, Georges (Fr. photographer and KZ prisoner) 313 Angelis, General der Artillerie Maximilian de 220 Annemarie (Austrian Resistant) 332 Anschluss (1938) 313 Antonov, Marshal A.J. 225 Aranda, Gabriel (Sp. KZ prisoner) 385 Arnijas, Mario (Sp. KZ prisoner) 127 Assberg, Brigadier General (Russian Liberation Army) 276 Asta (SS hound) 56, 93 Asturias, ‘Napoleon’ (Sp. Kapo) 62, 99 Atlantic Wall 3 Attia, Joe (Fr. criminal, KZ prisoner and author) 92, 342 Auschwitz 15, 131, 284, 318, 338 evacuation to Mauthausen 186, 296 marriage at 148–9 Australian prisoners of war 370 Austria 415

416 INDEX

Allied air attacks on 155–6, 171, 193–4 Allied invasion of 219–32 coming to terms with Nazi past 295–8 final German resistance in 273–9 Austrian prisoners at Mauthausen 79 Austrian Resistance 221 Azaustre, Manuel (Sp. KZ prisoner) 124, 172, 358 Babel, Ludwig (Ger. lawyer) 283, 381 Bachmayer, Frau 53, 249, 339 Bachmayer, SS-Hauptsturmführer Georg 41, 56, 57, 80, 86, 128, 132, 302, 327, 328, 338, 339, 342, 361, 367, 376 and Allied bombing raids 156, 352 and Allied prisoners 161–2, 163 background and character 51, 52–3 Boix’s feelings for 139–40 and the break-out from Block 20 181 and camp entertainments 80, 81, 82, 337 and Ebensee 105, 352 and escaped prisoners 115, 117 and Antonio García 177 Bachmayer, SSHauptsturm. Georg—contd. and Gusen 95, 104 and Juan de Diego 171, 209–10 leaves Mauthausen 209–10 and Leitzinger 170 murder of family 249 quarrel with Schultz 54 Badia (Sp. KZ prisoner) 247 Badoglio, Mario (It. KZ prisoner) 58, 163, 329–30 Badoglio, Marshal Pietro (It. Prime Minister) 329 Bailina, Josep (Sp. KZ prisoner) 33 Baklanov, Ivan (Sov. KZ prisoner) 361 Bailina, Josep (Sp. KZ prisoner) 33 Balck, General der Panzertruppen, Hermann 220, 276, 277 Balogh, Istvan (Hung. KZ prisoner) 100, 159 Barbie, SS-Hauptsturmführer Klaus 380 Bardon, Bohumil (Cz. KZ prisoner) 346, 377

Bargueño, Ramón ‘Marmeladeding’ (Sp. KZ prisoner) xiv–xv, 57, 142–3, 163, 172, 182, 203, 205, 322, 328–9, 343, 355, 356, 358, 366, 368, 386 and Antonio García 302 and the departure of the SS 208, 209 and the liberation of Mauthausen 242, 245, 253, 258, 260–1, 262 returns to France (1945) 299 revisits Mauthausen (1995) 252 Barta, Drahomir (Cz. KZ prisoner) 74, 152, 167, 168, 169, 336, 352 and the liberation of Ebensee 264, 265, 266 at the trial of Ganz 291 Bartesch, SS-Schütze Martin 383 Barton, Corporal Theodore (Australian POW) 270 Bates, SS-Hauptsturmführer 274, 275 Bazna, Elyesa alias Cicero (Albanian Nazi agent) 362 Becker, SS-Brigadeführer Helmut 221 Benech, Dr Jean (Fr. KZ prisoner and author) 76, 202, 260 Benedicto, Antonio (Sp. Kapo) 67 Bentele, SS-Obersturmführer Alfons 288, 382 Bergen-Belsen, liberation of 226, 228, 370 Bergh, S/Sgt. Edward A. (US Army) 252, 254, 372 Bergkristall project (Gusen II) 98–9, 294 Berlin Battle of 190, 219 Gestapo headquarters 145 Spanish Embassy 145 Bernadette von Wisburg, Count Folke (Swe. Red Cross) 198 Bernal, Francisco (Sp. Kapo) 81, 152, 154, 318, 321, 335, 338 Bernat Carbo, Constantino (Sp. KZ prisoner) 348 Bernstein, Michael S. (US Govt official) 35, 324–5 Bertaux, Pierre (Fr. academician and govt official) 380 Bertolini, Ramón (Sp. KZ prisoner) 361 Bettelheim, Bruno (Austrian psychologist, KZ prisoner and US author) 322

INDEX 417

Biagoni, Sgt. Louis (OSS agent and KZ prisoner) 372 Biedermann, Major Karl (Wehrmacht) 221 Billotte, Captain (Fr. Army and KZ prisoner) 62 Bina, Christina (Mauthausen villager) 310– 11 Bisbal Costa, Juan (Sp. KZ prisoner) 247 Bittrich, SS-Obergruppenführer Wilhelm 221, 276 Bitukov, Captain Ivan (Sov. POW) 183 Blalock, Maj. Hill (US Army) 253, 262 Blanco Valdés, Colonel Joaquín (Sp. Rep. Army) 127 Bobuck, Lt. Alex (US Army) 371 Boehmberger, Leopold (Austrian Nazi) 182, 360 Boix Campo, Francesc (Sp. KZ prisoner) 35, 54, 79, 138–41, 143, 172, 173, 174, 204, 205, 350, 359, 363, 380, 388 attack on Climent by 175–6, 177, 302 and communist vilification of Antonio García 301, 302, 303–4, 305, 307, 308, 309 and evidence at war crimes trials 282, 283–4, 288, 348, 381 fight with Antonio García 176–7 and the interrogation of Ziereis 262 and the Liberation 237, 256 Boluda Ferrero, Francisco (Sp. KZ prisoner) 83 Bonaque, Santiago (Sp. KZ prisoner) 348, 355 Bonarewitz, Hans or Hans Bremen (Austrian KZ prisoner) 39, 117–19, 348 Bonet, Manuel (Sp. Rep. Army officer and KZ prisoner) 348, 388 Borrás Lluch, José (Sp. KZ prisoner and author) 11–12, 317, 338, 343, 348 Boüard, Michel de (Fr. KZ prisoner and historian) 23, 26, 57, 71, 78, 123, 159, 182, 354 Bovet (Sp. musician and KZ prisoner) 337 Brady, Lt. Col. James R. (US Army) 212 Brady, Sgt. John L. (US Army) 270–1 Brandt, Dr Karl (Hitler’s personal physician) 281 Branny, Leon (KZ prisoner) 341

Braun, SS-Obersturmführer Georg 6, 7 Breitenfellner, Obergefreiter Josef 84 Bretstein (Aussenkommando) 113–15, 116, 347 Brieux, Louis (Fr. Kapo) 344 British Intelligence Corps 315 British prisoners of war 9, 370 Bruckner, SS-Unterscharführer Hans 172, 237, 358 Buch, Ray (American historian) 253 Buchenwald 15, 23, 29–30, 131, 164, 185, 186–7, 313, 318, 319, 321, 323, 324, 330, 337, 361, 366, 380 evacuation of 227–8 liberation of 195, 225–7, 370 Bueno, Miguel (Sp. KZ prisoner) 363 Bühner, SS-Scharführer Hans 366 Bukowski, Ignacy (Pol. KZ prisoner) 341 Bünau, General der Infanterie Rudolf von 221 Burckhardt, Professor Carl Jacob (CICR) 196 Burney, Christopher (British KZ prisoner and author) 75, 333–4 Burwitz, Gudrun née Himmler 380 Busek, Prof. Dr. Vratislav (Cz. KZ prisoner) 258, 339, 346, 376 Busquets Gelabert, Major Roman (Sp. Republican air force officer) 111, 147 Cabeza, Carlos (Sp. KZ prisoner) 124 Cagancho (Sp. gunman) 306 Calmarza (Sp. KZ prisoner) 354 Calvocoressi, Peter (Br. intelligence officer and historian) 282, 380 camps and prisons camp commandants 19 classification and stratification of 14–17 colour classifications 15, 17 food rations 24 French 26 and the industrial programme 18–19 mortality rates in 19–21 prisoner-police 17 prisoners arrival at the camp 22 everyday life 22–8

418 INDEX

mortality rates of 19–21 murder of 20 survivors 27–8 triangle insignia 16 whipping of 25–6 and work 18–19, 27 see also individual camps and prisons Canadian prisoners of war 196 cannibalism 187, 194 Cardona Torrandell, B. (Sp. KZ prisoner) 315 Carmona Herrera, Manuel (Sp. KZ prisoner) 125 Carreras, José (Sp. KZ prisoner) 201 Català, Sancho (PCE leader) 305 Catalans 139 Catelas, Jean (PCF leader) 387–8 Cazelle, Marcel (Fr. KZ prisoner) 167 Cereceda, José (Sp. KZ prisoner) 173 Cerejo Rute, Manuel (Sp. KZ prisoner) 114, 116, 117 César Kommando 108–13, 200, 344 Chacón, Angel (Sp. KZ prisoner) 142–3, 163, 299, 355 Channel Islands xiii, 3–8, 279, 289, 314– 16, 380 Chatenay, Capt. (Fr. Army) 371 children at Mauthausen 65–7 see also Poschacher Kommando Chmielewski, SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl 95–6, 97, 288, 290, 343, 345 Chombart de Lauwe, Marie-Jo (Fr. KZ prisoner) 318 Choumoff, Pierre Serge (Fr. KZ prisoner) 57, 99–100, 253, 254, 354, 364, 365 Chozas, Baldomero (Sp. KZ prisoner) 50, 100–2, 130, 299, 326, 339, 343–4 Churchill, Winston 253 ‘Cicero’ see Bazna, Elyesa Cinca Vendrell, Captain Amadeo (Sp. KZ prisoner and author) 9, 71, 255, 357 Claudín, Fernando (PCE leader and author) 308 Clemente (Sp. KZ prisoner) 335, 336 Climent Sarrión, Casimir (Sp. KZ prisoner) 11, 12, 33–4, 39, 128, 142, 303, 324, 362, 386 attacked by Boix 175–6, 177, 302

death certificates provided by 298–9 irrational behaviour of 132 and outgoing letters 131 and Schultz 54, 55 witness at Cologne trial 291 CNT (Confederatión nacional del trabajo) 157 Cold War 293, 300 Collins, Lt. Kedar B. (US Army) 270 Cologne trial (1966–7) 35, 346 Colville, John (private secretary to Churchill) 370 Comellas i Llinares, Francesc (Sp. KZ prisoner) 102–3, 200, 201–2 Comín, Julio (Sp. KZ prisoner) 279, 315 communists and the liberation of Mauthausen 241– 3, 245–6, 260–1 and the Nuremberg Tribunal 282 Spanish and Antonio García 301–9 and resistance 123 survivors 300 Conill (Sp. Kapo) 48–9, 326 Conley, Colonel Edgar T. (US Army) 276 Constante Campo, Mariano (Sp. KZ prisoner) xiv, xv, 53, 58, 63, 69, 101, 102, 126, 172, 299, 327, 333, 349, 356, 357, 360, 363, 388 and Antonio García 302–3, 304, 308–9, 358 García’s letters to 139 and the liberation of Mauthausen 242 and the resistance 123, 124, 348 Triangle bleu 306, 356 and war crimes trials 288 Cortés Borrás, Francisco (Sp. KZ prisoner) 66, 332, 368 Cortés García, Jacinto (Sp. KZ prisoner) 66, 207, 282, 304, 307, 309–10, 332, 388 testimony of 309–12 Certés García, José (Sp. KZ prisoner) 66, 332 Cortés García, Manuel (Sp. KZ prisoner) 66, 332, 368 Cruickshank, Charles (Br. historian) 315–16 Cueva, Isidore (Sp. KZ prisoner) 315

INDEX 419

Cyrankiewicz, Jozef (Pol. KZ prisoner) 166, 300, 387 Czech prisoners at Mauthausen 69, 73–4, 79 Czimelda (Cz. KZ prisoner) 86 Dachau 14–15, 19, 60, 75, 117, 185, 186, 195, 318, 333, 335, 337, 366 liberation of 200, 228–9, 377 Dachau trial (1946) 331, 364 Dager, Maj. Gen. Holmes E. (US Army) 212, 228, 229, 230, 232, 233, 256, 257, 271, 275, 276, 375 Dahlem, Franz (KDP leader and KZ prisoner) 157–8, 166, 260, 300, 320, 353 Dähler, Lorenz (Ger. Green Oberkapo) 152, 266 Daix, Pierre (Fr. KZ prisoner and author) 49, 60, 159, 293, 295, 303, 354, 358, 384 Dalmau, Lt. Juan (Sp. KZ prisoner and Br. author) 4, 315, 318 Daniel, Lt.-Col. Robert (Br. Army) 228 Danube, Battle of the 245–8 Dean or Dien, Carlotta or Isabella (US citizen and KZ prisoner) 372 Delfieu, Maurice (Fr. KZ prisoner and author) 334 Demanche, René-Jean (Fr. KZ prisoner and author) 56 Denuel, SS-Schütze Mathias 383 Derichsweiler, Generalmajor 275–6 DEST (Deutsche Erd-und Steinwerke) 89, 95, 198 Díaz Cañada, Antonio (Sp. KZ prisoner) 146 Díaz Tendero, Lt.-Colonel Eleuterio (Sp. Rep. Army and KZ prisoner) 15 Diego Herranz, Juan de (Sp. KZ Lagerschreiber) 9, 22, 24, 25, 26, 34, 35, 39, 59, 118, 183, 188, 310, 316, 319, 322, 323, 324, 332–3, 335, 336, 337, 342, 348, 350, 355, 363, 367, 373, 376, 383, 384, 388 and Allied bombing raids 155, 156 and atrocities against Allied prisoners 161–2, 163, 164 on Bachmayer 53 on Constante 172

and Cortés’ testimony 310, 312 and the departure of the SS 209–10 and the FEDIP 301 and the Frente 160 and Leitzinger 170 and the liberation of Mauthausen 242, 243, 246 on Olaso Piera 78 on photographs at Mauthausen 205 on the Poles 71 and quarry work 90, 91 returns to France 298 on Schloss Hartheim 109 on the Spaniards 75 and the Spanish Embassy in Berlin 145 on the Ukrainians 70 witness at Cologne trial 291 work in the Lagerschreibstube 127–30, 131, 132, 142, 171, 349 Dietrich, SS-Oberstgruppenführer Joseph ‘Sepp’ 220, 276, 277, 369, 379 Dimitrov, Georgi (Bulg. secretary-general of the Comintern) 353 Dionne, Lt.-Colonel Jacques de (Fr. Army and KZ prisoner) 187–8, 282 Dircks, Major (Waffen-SS) 276, 379 Dobiáš, Přemysl (Cz. KZ prisoner) 49, 85–6, 152, 162, 163, 166–7, 171, 242, 330, 377, 382, 387 and the American link-up with the Soviets 271, 272 and the liberation of Mauthausen 242, 243, 262 Dolese, Captain Dr David B. (US Army) 257, 261–2, 262 Domingo, Félix ‘el Loco’ (Sp. Kapo) 62, 331 Donaulinde Kommando 93–4, 329 Dora (camp) 30 Dostoevski, Rapportführer 127 Drabek, Alois (Cz. KZ prisoner) 152, 168, 266 Drabek, Otto (Austrian SS NCO) 57 Drexel, Joseph (Ger. KZ prisoner and author) 163–4, 355 Drexler, Leopoldine (Mauthausen villager) 49, 206, 252, 297, 310–11 Dreyfus, Dr Gilbert alias Gilbert Debrise (Fr. physician and KZ prisoner) 331

420 INDEX

Dreyfus, Dr Yvan (Fr. KZ prisoner) 8, 289, 290 Drichkin, Maj. Gen. Daniil A. (Sov. Army) 270 Dubois, Maurice (Swiss social worker) 314 Dubost, Charles (French prosecutor at Nuremberg) 283, 381 Duclos, Jacques (PCF leader) 388 Dürmayer, Dr Heinrich (Austrian KZ prisoner) 166, 210, 236, 241, 242, 248, 258, 357, 375, 376 Dutch Jews see Jews Dworkin, Gen. Boms (Sov. KZ prisoner) 355 dysentery at Ebensee 107 at Gusen 193 Ebensee (camp) 102, 104–7, 108, 147, 193, 318, 321 evacuations to 194–8, 201, 264, 364 execution of Danilo Veronesi at 151–2, 167, 291 food rations 106 liberation of 201, 264–9 mortality rate 264 Resistance at 167–9 showers 106–7 town 269, 345 tunnels 264, 265, 267 Eckermann, Johann Peter 29 Eichmann, SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf 284–5 Eigruber, SS-Obergruppenführer August (Gauleiter Oberdonau) 130, 137, 191, 193, 209, 221, 223, 231, 280, 350, 363, 377 surrender to the Allies 273–4 trial and execution of 288 Eisenhöfer, SS-Obersturmführer Heinrich Hans 55–6, 57, 146–7, 288, 328 Eisenhower, General of the Army Dwight D. (Supreme Commander SHAEF) 225, 226–7, 232, 256, 276 ‘el Chato’ (SS Rapportführer) 66 ‘el Negro’ (Sp. Kapo) 62 ‘el Negus’ see Palleja, José

Ellenson, Lt. Gen. (US Army) 270, 271 Entress, SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr Hermann Friedrich 84, 338 Enzenhofer, Josef (Nazi official) 351 Escobedo, José (Sp. KZ prisoner) 63 Espallargas, Paulino (Sp. KZ prisoner) 79 Espí, Captain (Sp. KZ prisoner) 247 Ester, Alfonsina Bueno de 189 Ester Borrás, José (Sp. anarchist and KZ prisoner) 124, 157, 189, 301 Evers, OT-Meister Heinrich 7–8, 289–90, 315, 316 Fabréguet, Michel (Fr. historian) 181, 246, 323 Fabrick, Capt. Elmore (US Army) 255 Fajardo de Cortés, Juana (Sp. widow) 146 Falla family (inhabitants of Guernsey) 314– 15 Fassel, SS-Oberscharführer Werner 54, 55, 74, 290–1, 328 Federal Republic of Germany 293, 300 FEDIP (Federación Española de Deportados e Internados Políticos) 300–1, 339 Félix ‘el Loco’ see Domingo Ferencz, Sgt. Benjamin B. (US Army) 34 Fernández, Juan (Sp. KZ prisoner) 385 Fernández, Moisés (Sp. Kapo) 331 Fernández Lavín, Fernando (Sp. KZ prisoner) 157, 166, 355 Ferrer y Rey, Margarita (Sp. refugee) 148–9, 352 Fichez, Dr Louis François (Fr. physician and KZ prisoner) 354 Fiebinger, Karl (Ger. constructer) 98 Fiegl, Rudolf (Austrian Kapo) 96, 364 Figl, Leopold (Austrian KZ prisoner, later Chancellor) 294 Figueras, Salvador 307 Fleischmann, Dr (Austrian Kripo chief) 181– 2, 360 Flemister, Capt. Edgar (US Army) 255 Floridsdorf (camp) 155, 157, 200, 365, 366 Flossenbürg (camp) 15, 99, 185, 195, 227, 228, 229, 321 Font, Francisco (Sp. KZ prisoner) 3, 316 football

INDEX 421

at Gusen 98 at Mauthausen Haupdager 79 France Battle of (1944) 232 francophobia among prisoners at Mauthausen 69 return of Spanish prisoners to 298, 299 Vichy government and the Spaniards 3, 9, 64 Franco, General Francisco 300 Freixa, Dr Pedro (Sp. KZ prisoner) 354 Freller family (Mauthausen) 325 French camps 26 French Foreign Legion 319, 338 French prisoners at Mauthausen 69–70, 364 and the Spaniards 76–7, 78 Freund, Florian (Austrian historian) 352 Frey, Willy (Ger. KZ Blockältester) 186, 191 Friedl, Paul (Kapo at Ebensee) 266 Friemel, Rudolf Adolf (Austrian KZ prisoner) 148–9 Gabler, Leo (Austrian KZ prisoner) 159–60, 353, 354 Gamela (Sp. KZ prisoner) 336 Gammer, Martha (St Georgen villager) 244, 371, 372 Ganz, SS-Hauptsturmführer Julius Anton 62, 105, 151, 154, 167, 168, 169, 194, 195, 288, 345, 379, 383 arrest and trial of 290, 291 and the communists 301–9 and the liberation of Ebensee 264, 265–6 García, Enrique (Sp. KZ prisoner) 77 García, Father Luis (rector of Sp. convent) 145 García, Max R. (Dutch KZ prisoner) 269 García Alonso, Antonio (Sp. KZ prisoner) 35, 49, 70, 87, 118, 172, 314, 316, 321, 326, 335, 337, 340, 348, 358–9, 380, 383, 386 and Allied prisoners 161, 162 and the break-out from Block 20 181 fight withBoix 176–7 and Grabowski 174, 358 and the liberation of Mauthausen 258–9 meeting with Juan de Diego (1950s) 298

and the Nuremberg Tribunal 282, 283 return to France 303 return to Mauthausen in the 1960s 295 work in the photo laboratory 133–42, 173, 175, 204–5, 302, 309 García Barrado, Manuel (Sp. KZ prisoner) 48, 49, 50, 59, 68, 75, 87, 123, 125, 170, 310, 333, 339 and Antonio García 304 as custodian of the Mauthausen Museum 295, 297, 360 employment after the Liberation 298 and the liberation of Mauthausen 245, 246 García Cano, Antonio (Sp. KZ prisoner) 87, 298 García Manzano, Luis alias Luisin (Sp. KZ prisoner and writer) 304, 381 García Mochales, Francisco (Sp. KZ prisoner) 229, 377 García Ramos, Vicente (Sp. KZ prisoner) 114 gas chambers Buchenwald 186 Mauthausen Hauptlager 87–8, 108 mobile 110–11, 147, 285 Schloss Hartheim 109 Gattinger, Erich (Austrian manager) 181 Gaucher, Irène (Fr. KZ prisoner and author) 187 Geissler, SS-Sturmbannführer Kurt alias Kurt Schneider 330 Gelis Ribo, Joaquín (Sp. KZ prisoner) 348 German Communist Party (KPD) 318 German Democratic Republic 301 German newspapers 172 German prisoners at Mauthausen 79, 82, 359 German Red Cross 386 Germaneau, Jean (Fr. KZ prisoner and author) 76 Gerö, Ernö (Hung. KZ prisoner) 300 Geyr von Schweppenburg, General 220 Gil, Juan (Sp. KZ prisoner) 82, 88, 339, 367 Gil Blanco, Luis ‘el Peque’ (Sp. KZ prisoner) 124, 159 Ginestà, Salvador (Sp. KZ prisoner) 335 Giorgetti (It. tenor and KZ prisoner) 80

422 INDEX

‘el Gitano’ (Kapo at Ebensee) 266 Globocnik, SS-Gruppenführer Odilo 277, 286 Glücks, SS-Gruppenführer Richard 18, 320, 339 Goebbels, Josef 210, 211 Goering, Hermann 284, 320 Goessl, Georg (Ger. Kapo) 199 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 29, 112, 313, 347 Gogl, SS-Unterscharführer Johann Vinzenz 92, 163, 291–2, 355, 364 Goldstein, Pfc Sid (US Army) 259, 261 González, Benito (Sp. KZ prisoner) 385 González González, Indalecio (Sp. Kapo) 62, 331 Gouffault, Roger (Fr. KZ prisoner and author) 291, 345 Grabowski, Stefan (Pol. KZ prisoner) 134, 135–6, 137, 140–1, 174–5, 358 Gralinsky, Johann (Pol. KZ prisoner) 173, 309 Grassy, SS-Brigadeführer 223 Grau Suñer, Jesús (Sp. KZ prisoner) 207, 282, 304, 309, 311, 368, 380 Gray Key, Carlos (Sp. KZ prisoner) 75 Greek Jews see Jews Green, Stanley (Br. KZ prisoner) xv Greene, Major Michael J.L. (US Army) 233 Greens 55, 60, 61, 71 incorporated into SS units 192 incorporated into the Wehrmacht 170, 171 and the liberation of Mauthausen 243, 256 and the resistance 124 Greim, Generalfeldmarschall der Lw. Robert von 198 Grimm, SS-Obersturmführer Johannes Bernhard 56–7, 90, 288 Gross-Rosen (camp) 15, 323, 338, 361 Gruber, Andreas (Austrian film producer) xvi, 333, 385 Gruzdev, Major (Soviet Military Mission) 279 Guderian, Generaloberst Heinz 9 Guernsey 3, 4 Guernsey Underground News Service 314

Guerrero Pérez, José (Sp. KZ prisoner) 318 Guillemot, Gisèle (Fr. KZ prisoner) 189 Guillon, Jean (Fr. KZ prisoner) 354 Gunskirchen (camp) 320, 342 Gusen camps 15, 31, 62, 65, 95–100, 318, 327, 335, 343, 354, 357, 364 Allied air raids on 155 Badeaktion at 96–7 Block 31 193 brothel 72, 192, 363 crematorium 96, 99, 192, 238, 367 death rates of Spaniards in 68, 358 departure of the SS from 211 entertainment at 97–8 excavations at 130–1, 185 Gusen II (St Georgen) 98–9, 104, 192, 193, 196–7, 198, 234 Gusen III (Lungitz) 98 Italian prisoners at 70 Kellerbau Kommando (Gusen I) 98 Leitzinger’s execution at 170 liberation of 233–5, 238, 239, 244, 255– 6 cleaning-up operations 260 methods of liquidation at 96–7 and the mobile gas chamber 110 museum 39 numbers of survivors 195 Polish prisoners at 72 showers 97 Spaniards at 96 SS 96, 298 tunnels 193–4, 197, 198, 263, 297 Gusen village 95 Gutiérrez Souza, Manuel ‘el Sardina’ (Sp. KZ prisoner) 66, 68, 311 Gyldenfeldt, Generalleutnant Heinz von 274, 275, 369 Hackett, David (American historian) 296 Hackl, Capt. A.J. (US Army) 382 Hadamar (camp) 346 Haddock, Major F. (British Army) 279 Haefliger, Louis (CICR official) 196–8, 210– 11, 213, 234, 247, 365, 369, 371, 374, 386

INDEX 423

Haeger, SS-Oberscharführer Heinrich 191, 288 Haider, SS-Hauptscharführer Johann Haider 128, 346, 355 Hall, Pfc Horace (US Army) 213 Harmel, SS-Brigadeführer Heinz 224, 277 Hartheim, Schloss 109–11, 286, 346, 378, 383 Hasso (hound of Schultz) 54 Hatel, Franz (Mauthausen villager) 206, 368 Haunschmied, Rudolf A. (Austrian historian) 373 Haussmann (Cz. dentist and KZ prisoner) 336 Havez, Auguste (Fr. KZ prisoner) 168, 268, 379 Hayes, Charles H. (US CIC) 377 Hearn, Lt. Col. Frederick K. (US Army) 212, 230 Heikmann (musician and KZ prisoner) 347 Heim, SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr Aribert Ferdinand alias Ferdinand 86, 339, 383 Heim, Professor Dr Roger (Fr. KZ prisoner and academician) 63, 96, 98 Helferich, Dr Karl (Ger. KZ prisoner) 162, 355 Hengl, General der Gebirgstruppen Georg Ritter von 220 Henkel, SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr Wilhelm 84 Henocque, Abbé Georges (Fr. KZ prisoner) 334 Hens, S/Sgt. Leander W. (US Army) 213, 235, 236, 237, 240, 241, 252, 253, 254, 372 Hernández, Pedro (Sp. journalist) 350 Herzfelder, François (Fr. lawyer) 300 Herzogenbusch (camp) 343 Heydrich, SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard 53, 73–4, 128, 146, 188, 319, 346, 362 Himmler, SS-Untersturmführer Hans 330 Himmler, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich 14, 20, 21, 25, 51, 66, 82, 87, 324, 327, 350, 367, 370, 382 commits suicide 280 and evacuation of the Nebenlager 185, 195–6, 200 forbids release from Mauthausen 171–2

formation of SS regiment from Mauthausen prisoners 193 and Gusen II 98 on liquidation of prisoners 192, 198, 263 and the mobile gas chambers 110–11 seeks separate peace with the Allies 195 visits to Mauthausen 37, 38, 40, 130–1 Hinterberg Kommando 200 Hitler, Adolf 60, 315, 320, 327, 350 and Allied invasion of Austria 221, 222 death of 204, 231 and the July Plot 156, 172, 202, 280 visit to Linz 295 Hoffman, Heinrich (Ger. photographer) 280 Hoffmann, Johann (Lagerleiter Helgoland) 5, 382 Hoffmann, Hauptmann Karl 5–6, 289, 382 Hoffmann, Leopold (Cz. KZ prisoner) 160, 166 Högelow, SS-Hauptscharführer Otto 6 Holbrook, Brig. Gen. Willard A.Jr. 229, 230–1, 233, 235, 271 Horcicka, Karl (Green Kapo) 331 Horn, SS-Oberscharführer 59 Horthy, Nicolas (Hung. KZ prisoner) 58 Horwitz, Gordon (US historian) 181, 296, 297 Hudal, Alois (Austrian bishop) 381 Hüffmeier, Vizeadmiral Friedrich 279 Hughston, Captain George B. (US Army) 235 Hungarian Jews see Jews Hunt, Swanee (American ambassador) 240, 241 Huth, Hauptmann Alfred 221 Ibarruri, Dolores (La Pasionaria) 304–5, 308 Ikhanov, Mikhail ‘Misha the Tartar’ (Russ. KZ prisoner) 179 Ingrassia, Captain (CIC) 244 Innitzer, Theodor Cardinal, Primate of Austria 206 International Brigades 77, 158, 159, 186, 314, 366, 387 International Red Cross xiii, 33, 48, 71, 79, 131, 175, 193, 314, 364, 365, 374, 386

424 INDEX

Irwin, Maj. Gen. James A. (US Army) 275, 276, 375 Issupov, Col. Aleksandr (Sov. Air Force and KZ prisoner) 359 Italian prisoners at Mauthausen 70, 335, 354, 364 Izquierdo, Primitive (Sp. KZ prisoner) 114– 16 Jackson, Basil A. (photographer for ‘Thunderbolt’) 256 Jackson, Pfc Joe Wahoo (US Army) 213 Jahn, Josef (Bürgermeister of Mauthausen) 246, 247, 252, 333 Janvier, Odette (Fr. KZ prisoner) 303, 304, 340, 387 Jentsch, SS-Hauptscharführer Heinz 96, 290, 343, 383 Jersey (Channel Islands) 3, 4, 279 Jews 17, 314, 315, 323, 328, 338, 342, 352, 364, 371 Dutch 91–2, 334, 342 in the Channel Islands 4, 6, 279 extermination through work 19 Greek 70, 334 Hungarian 70, 342, 360, 361 killing of 46, 77–8, 86, 91, 191 Polish 360, 367 Romanian 77–8 US intelligence report on Jewish children 226 Jodl, Generaloberst Alfred (OKW) 313 John-Paul II, Pope 381 Johnson, Capt. Bernard C. (US Army) 274 Johnson, Capt. Eugene B. (US Army) 261–2 Johnson, Pvt Frank H. (US Army) Juncosa Escoda, José (Sp. KZ prisoner) 103 Jury, Dr Hugo (Gauleiter of Niederdonau) 223 Justo, Miguel (Sp. KZ prisoner) 346 Kaduk, SS-Hauptscharführer 186, 191 Kaltenbrunner, SS-Obergruppenführer Dr Ernst 37, 38, 40, 53, 130, 164, 171, 192, 196, 197, 263, 319, 320, 361, 369 capture, trial and execution of 280–2, 282–3, 284, 380

Kaltenbrunner, Lisl (wife of Kaltenbrunner) 280–1 Kamenkovich, Lt. Ilya (Sov. Army and writer) 385 Kammler, SS-Obergruppenführer Dr Ing. Hans 345 Kanduth, Hans (Austrian Kapo) 341, 353– 4, 367 Kanthack, Gerhard (Ger. KZ prisoner) 35, 54 Kapos 15–16, 17, 19–20 at Ebensee 105, 106 lynch justice after the Liberation 266–7 at Gusen 255 and the liberation of Mauthausen 244– 5, 256, 258–9 at Mauthausen Hauptlager 46, 51, 60–2, 71, 72, 79, 331, 341 and Spanish survivors 299 at Steyr 102 transferred to the Wehrmacht 170, 171 Karbychev, Major-General Dimitry Mikhailovich (Sov. POW) 187, 302 Kartun, Léon (Fr. concert pianist and KZ prisoner) 289, 316 Kauffmann, SS-Scharführer Anton 343 Kauffmann, Kurt (Ger. lawyer) 282 Keach, Lt. Col. Milton W. (US Army) 212, 254–5, 257, 258, 377 Keitel, SS-Obersturmbannführer Karl-Heinz 223, 277 Keitel, Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm 21, 320 Keller, Magnus ‘King Kong’ (Ger. KZ Lagerältester) after the liberation of Mauthausen 244–5 background and character 61, 66, 82, 105 and Bargueño 142 and Bonarewitz’s execution 118 and the hanging of Danilo Veronesi 152 transfer to Gunskirchen 168 at the trial of Gogl 292 Kellerbau project (Gusen) 294 Kennedy, John (Br. KZ prisoner) 362 Kennington, Alice B. (US Govt investigator) 293

INDEX 425

Kern, Hauptmann (Vienna fire-brigade chief) 208, 210, 236, 242, 243, 297, 368 Kersten, Dr Felix (Himmler’s physician) 198 Kesselring, Generalfeldmarschall der Lw. Albert 219, 229, 370 Keyes, Lt.-Gen. Geoffrey (US Army) 380 Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeievich 308 Kiefer, Lt. William J. (US Army) 377 Kieling, Second Lt. Henry B. (US Army) 235 Killermann, SS-Hauptscharführer Hans Michael 36, 58, 96, 263, 330, 344, 364 ‘King Kong’ see Keller, Magnus Kirsch, SS-Oberscharführer Josef 339 Kissel, Sgt. Frank (US Army) 213 Klat, Josef (Cz. KZ prisoner) 85, 110, 339, 382, 387 Klebeck, SS-Obersturmführer Kurt 6, 382 Kleingunther, SS-Unterscharführer Otto 85, 382 Klestil, Thomas (Austrian President) 296 Klima, Viktor (Austrian Chancellor) 296 Kobus, Chief Warrant Officer Walter S. (US Army) 262 Koch, Use (wife of SS Lagerkommandant) 288 Kodré, Colonel Heinrich (Austrian KZ prisoner) 244, 248, 357, 375 Kofler, SS-Rapportführer Franz 132, 206, 288 Kogon, Eugen (Ger. KZ prisoner and author) 228, 318, 370 Kohl, Josef (Austrian KZ prisoner) 158, 166 Kohout, Johann (Austrian Gendarmerie) 182 Kondakov, Georgi Ivanovich (Sov. POW) 5, 315 Konetz, OT-Bauleiter Theo 6, 7 Kornacz, SS-Oberscharführer Friedrich ‘Fritz’ 134, 135, 136 Kosiek, S/Sgt. Albert J. (US Army) 233–5, 237, 238, 240, 254, 255, 256, 371, 372, 375 Koziats, Emil (Pol. Green Kapo) 337 Kraas, SS-Oberführer Hugo 222 Krebsbach, SS-Sturmbannführer Dr Eduard 74, 83–4, 84–5, 338, 339 Kreindl, Dr Walter (Nazi official) 351

Kreutz, SS-Standartenführer Karl 369 Kreysing, General der Gebirgstruppen Hans von 220, 223, 273, 275, 276 Krüger, SS-Sturmbannführer Bernhard 188 Krüger, SS-Rottenführer Erich Walter 20 Krüger, SS-Oberscharführer Georg 145, 340 Krutis, Johan (Cz. KZ prisoner) 209 Kugel-Aktion 20–1 Kumm, SS-Brigadeführer Otto 222, 369 Kurschinski, Erich (KZ prisoner) 361 Kutcher, Col. Nathaniel (US Army) 257 Laffitte, Jean (Fr. KZ prisoner and author) 65, 69, 76–7, 78, 89, 168, 169, 266, 268, 291, 318, 319, 321, 331, 345 Lammerding, SS-Gruppenführer Heinz 220, 369 Lampe, Maurice (Fr. KZ prisoner) 282 Langbein, Hermann (Ger. KZ prisoner and historian) 246 Langthaler, Johann and Maria (Austrian farmers) 183 Largo Caballero, Francisco (Sp. Republican prime minister) 29, 190, 300, 318 Larkins, Lt. (US Army) 234, 235 Lasky, Pfc Solomon (US Army) 228, 229 Lastowka, Miroslav (Pol. KZ prisoner) 309 Lavín, Fernando (Sp. KZ prisoner) 248, 356, 375 Le Caër, Dr Paul (Fr. KZ prisoner and author) 207, 260 Le Chêne, Evelyn (British author) 49, 306 Le Chêne, Pierre (British SOE officer and KZ prisoner) 90 Le Cornu family (inhabitants of Jersey) 315 Leclerc, Gen. Philippe (Fr. Army) 370 Lehner, Ferdinand (St Georgen villager) 196, 197 Leitner, Edo ‘Pepe’ (Ger. poet and KZ prisoner) 313 Leitzinger, Josef (Austrian KZ Green Lagerschreiber) 127–8, 170–1 Lengsteiner, Otto (Nazi official) 351 Levi, Primo (It. KZ prisoner, author, and Nobel Prizewinner) 27 Lewicki, Tadeusz (Pol. KZ prisoner) 341 Ley, Reichsleiter Robert 280

426 INDEX

Liebl, Veronica (wife of Eichmann) 284 Liesberg, Franz (Ger. Green Kapo) 364 Linz 155, 195, 222 and the liberation 231–2, 233, 238 Nazi past of 295–6 Lipinski, Emil (Green Kapo) 331 Lipinski, Fritz (Ger. Green Kapo) 85 List, SS-Hauptsturmführer Maximilian 6, 382 Líster Forján, Gen. Enrique Jesús (Sp. Rep. Army) 316 Llombard Xincho, Josep (Sp. KZ prisoner) 39, 125 Löhr, Generaloberst Alexander 220, 224, 370 Loibl-Pass (camp) 344 break-out of prisoners at 184 construction of tunnel at 103, 108 Lonauer, SS-Hauptsturmführer Rudolf 109 London, Artur G. alias Gérard alias Singer (Cz. Resistance leader, KZ prisoner and author) 158, 159, 160, 300, 336, 348, 353, 365 López Árias, Amadeo (Sp. KZ prisoner) 201 López Bermúdez, Francisco (Sp. KZ prisoner) 347 López Hernández, Marceline (Sp. KZ prisoner) 97–8, 211, 298, 343 López Raimundo, Gregorio (PSUC leader) 141 López Rubio, Cristóbal (Sp. KZ prisoner) 315 López Yáñez, Alfonso (Sp. KZ prisoner) 114, 116, 117 Lörcher, Ernst (Ger. KZ prisoner) 168 Lord (SS hound) 93, 153, 161–2 Lorenz see Dähler, Lorenz 152 Losa (Sp. Kapo) 62 Lucas, Lt. Richard L. (US Army) 271 Ludolf, SS-Hauptsturmführer Julius 108, 156, 288 Luengo Muñoz, Lieutenant-Colonel Léon (Sp. KZ prisoner) 111 Luppino, Fabio (It. KZ prisoner) 24, 337 Maack, SS-Oberführer 223

Macanovic, Hrvoje (Yug. KZ prisoner) 153, 167, 168, 265 McCreery, Lt.-General (Br. Army) 224, 277 Maierhofer, Karl ‘Llup’ (Ger. Black Kapo) xiv, 62 Majdanek (camp) 318 Malle, Miguel (Sp. KZ prisoner) 166, 202, 242, 245–6, 247, 248, 257, 261, 341, 356–7, 367, 374 Malle-Dupuy, Dr Denise 353 Manit Perich, Antonio (Sp. KZ prisoner) 146 Marempolsky, Vasilly (Sov. POW) 4 Marfil Escabona, José (Sp. KZ prisoner) 77 Margilev, General (Sov. Army) 271 Mariam (Ger. Green Kapo) 125 Maršálek, Hans (Austrian KZ Lagerschreiber and author) 31, 68, 76, 99, 158, 166, 171, 210, 322, 353, 357, 377–8 account of the liberation of Mauthausen 240, 241, 248, 272, 373 and the interrogation of Ziereis 262 Marsik, Franz (Cz. KZ prisoner) 258, 376 Martin, Ernst (Austrian KZ prisoner) 83 Martínez, Felipe Amable (Sp. guerrillero and KZ prisoner) 157, 168, 304 Martínez, José (Sp. publisher) 304, 306 Martínez Aliaga,Jaime (Sp. KZ prisoner) 144 Martínez Carpio, José (Sp. KZ prisoner) 348 Martínez Coulikoff, Angelita (Sp. KZ prisoner) 363 Martínez Pérez, Antonio (Sp. KZ prisoner) 145 Marty, André (PCF leader) 388 Mascherbauer, Johann and Theresia (Austrian farmers) 183 Mashkin, Major Georgi (Soviet Army) 272 Matucher, Karl (Austrian-Cz. KZ prisoner) 56, 93 Mauthausen Hauptlager Allied prisoners of war at 142, 161–4 Appellplatz 63, 71, 113 Arrest 57–8 see also Bunker arrival at 45–50, 51, 63–5 barbers 125–6, 162 Block 1 72, 79 Block 2 136, 185

INDEX 427

Block 6 66 Block 11 66 Block 12 78 Block 16 65 Block 17 65 Block 18 65 Mauthausen Hauptlager— contd. Block 20 57, 178–9 brothel 60, 72–3, 192, 335, 363 Bunker 57, 142–3, 163, 163–4, 172, 261–2 canteen 79 Christmas 150–1 crematorium 32, 88, 191, 203, 340 workers 32, 191 deaths of Spaniards at 11–13 demolition of 295 entertainments 79–82 escape attempts 112–19 evacuations to 185–91, 296 food rations 65 gas chamber 87–8, 108, 110, 203, 261, 340 hangings 79, 112–13, 118–19, 150 international committee 157–60, 165, 185–6, 210, 236, 237 control of camp after the Liberation 241–3, 245, 247, 258 international friction at 69–72 Kapos 46, 51, 60–2, 71, 72 Lagerschreibstube 128–30, 171 letters and parcels 131–2, 145–6 liberation of xiii–xiv, 235–63, 249–51 arrival of US forces 235–9 and the Battle of the Danube 245–8 cleaning-up operations 259–60 deaths following 256 differing accounts of 240–2 and food supplies 260–1 hunt for Kapos and SS after 244–6, 262 return of the Americans to 253, 256–63 library 78 life expectancy of prisoners 31 local Kommandos 93–4 location 30 music at 79–80, 112, 113, 237 Muselmänner 26 numbers of survivors 195

overcrowding 23 personal possessions 47, 48–9 photographic laboratory (Erkennungsdienst) 133–42, 143, 173–7, 204–5, 302, 309 plan of camp 44 population 30–1 Poschacher Kommando 205–7 prisoners’ ashes 55, 144–5, 147 quarantine blocks 47–8 quarry 89–92, 162–3, 189 repatriation of prisoners from 294–5 Resistance 123–4, 165–7 Revier 83–7 roll-call 24 shower-room 47 Siedlungsbau Kommando 93 Spanish boys 65–8 see also Poschacher Kommando SS 31, 51–9, 171 and the Austrian civilian population 67 delinquent 58–9 departure of the 208–11, 242 doctors 83–7 hounds 54, 56, 93, 153, 161–2 incorporation of Greens into 192, 193 and the Lagerschreibstube 129 library 128 and photography 137, 141 and the quarry 89, 91, 92 women guards 72, 189 suicides 75 survival of the evidence on 32–5 survivors of 298–309 Tent Camp (Zeltlager) 191, 360 valuta (exchange rate) 348 women prisoners at 31, 189, 256 Mauthausen Museum 48, 50, 295, 317, 320, 346 Mauthausen Nebenlager 18, 95–108, 352 Bretstein 113–15, 116 escapes from 178 evacuations 183, 195–8, 199–203 Floridsdorf 155, 157, 200, 365, 366 Gunskirchen 378 Hinterberg 200, 365 liberation of 225 Linz 155, 195

428 INDEX

Melk 108, 155–6, 194, 199, 314, 345, 364 number of SS assigned to 31 Schlier 200–1, 344 Schloss Hartheim 109–11, 286 Schwechat 365 Steyr 100–2, 117, 145, 155, 195, 271, 275, 322, 329, 343, 347, 365 Vöcklabruch 103, 117 see also Ebensee; Gusen camps Mauthausen village 49, 67–8, 94, 183, 333 and the Liberation 246–7, 259–60 military cemetery 70, 182 and the Nazi past 296–8 Mayalde, José Final Count de (Sp. diplomat) 145 Mayer (Austrian KZ prisoner) 158, 159, 353 Mayor, Dr Claude (CICR official) 196 Mena, Sebastian (Sp. KZ prisoner) 90 Mercade Martí, Eudaldo (Sp. KZ prisoner) 146 Michelet, Edmond (Fr. politician, Resistance leader, KZ prisoner and author) 76 Miessner, SS-Unterscharführer 186, 191 Milburn, Maj.-Gen. Frank W. (US Army) 370 Miller, Colonel John B. (US Army) 241 Miret Musté, Josep alias Jean Regnier (Sp. KZ prisoner) 78, 103–4, 157, 353 Miroff, SS-Untersturmführer Fritz 200 Modesto, Gen. Juan (Sp. Rep. Army) 316, 375 Moncín Cortés, Pedro 387 Moncín Lara, Pedro (Sp. KZ prisoner) 386 Monin, Lt.-Colonel Robert (Fr. Army) 268 Montero, Juan alias Domínguez (Sp. Resistance leader and KZ prisoner) 353 Montero, Luis (Sp. KZ prisoner) 157, 165, 247–8, 305, 353, 356 Montgomery, Field Marshal Sir Bernard (Br. Army) 370 Moosburg (Stalag VII-A) 10, 147 Mordovtsev, Capt. Gennadi (Sov. Air Force and KZ prisoner) 359 Morel, André (Fr. KZ prisoner) 91 Moret, Emilio (Sp. KZ prisoner and FEDIP official) 300

Morillon, Albert (Fr. KZ prisoner) 242 Moussec, Serge de (Fr. KZ prisoner) 266 Mueller, Gerda 378 Müller (Kommandoführer of Steyr Kommando) 108 Müller, SS-Gruppenführer Heinrich (Gestapo chief) 20, 53 Müller, SS-Oberscharführer Johann 58 Müller, SS-Unterscharführer Wilhelm 54 Muñoz Orts, Eduardo (Sp. KZ prisoner) 357, 376 Mur Sánchez, Julián (Sp. KZ prisoner) 77 Murray, Maj.-Gen. (Br. Army) 277 Mussolini, Benito 369–70 ‘Nacht und Nebel’ 21, 320 Nates Gallo, José Lázaro (Sp. KZ prisoner) 65, 66, 86–7, 88, 301, 310, 312, 319, 332, 333 Navarro, José (Sp. KZ prisoner) 167 Navas García, Laureano (Sp. Kapo) 331 Neave, Major Airey (Br. Army) 282 Nebe, Arthur (Kripo chief) 53 Nebel, Gerhard (Wehrmacht and Ger. author) 6 Nelte, Dr Otto (Ger. lawyer) 320 Neue Bremm (camp) 357 Neugebauer, Frau (SS secretary) 55 Neuhofer family (Mauthausen) 325 Neumüller, Aloisa (Mauthausen villager) 84 Neumüller, Erich (Mauthausen villager) 49, 52, 246, 333, 338, 374 Nichols, William I. (American journalist) 227, 370, 371 Niederland, Dr William G. (US psychologist) 385–6 Niedermayer, SS-Oberscharführer Josef 57, 58, 88, 163, 164, 182–3, 188, 192, 328, 329, 355, 363 and Block 20 178 departure of 208 trial and execution of 288 Niermeijer, Willem Johan (Dutch SOE agent and KZ prisoner) 163, 355 Nieto, Jaime alias Bolados (PCE leader and KZ prisoner) 371 ‘la Niña’ 172

INDEX 429

Nischelwitzer, Josef (Austrian KZ prisoner) 255–6 Noky, SS-Unterscharführer Eugen Hermann 36 Nos Fibla, José (Sp. KZ prisoner) 145 Nos Fibla, Juan Bautista (Sp. KZ prisoner) 145 Nuremberg (Stalag XIII-A) 10 Nuremberg Tribunal 71, 188, 280, 281–4, 285, 286, 287, 292, 313, 320, 340, 359, 367 Offenbacher, Generalleutnant Konrad 275– 6 Ojer Ruil, Angel (Sp. KZ prisoner) 146–7 Olaso Piera, Joaquín alias Martin alias Emmanuel (Sp. NKVD agent and KZ prisoner) 78, 189, 363 Oliva, Karl (KZ prisoner) 53 Oliván, Federico (Sp. diplomat) 352 Olivier, Captain (Fr. Army and KZ prisoner) 196, 357 Omedes, Gaspar (Sp. KZ prisoner) 339 Opitz, Alfred (Ger. Kapo) 35 Oranienburg (camp) 29 Ornstein, Wilhelm (crematorium worker) 191, 328, 341, 354, 360, 363, 367, 384 Orquín Serra, César (Sp, KZ prisoner) 102, 103 Orvbiec (Sov. KZ prisoner) 181–2 Oselton, Frank (inhabitant of Alderney) 314 Otero, Francisco (Sp. KZ prisoner) 339, 382 Otto (Ger. Kapo at Ebensee) 266–7 Pacheco, Mauricio (Sp. KZ prisoner) 346 Pagès Moret, Juan (Sp. KZ prisoner) 177, 301, 348, 375 Pagetta, Giuliano (It. KZ prisoner) 166 Palleja Carait, José ‘el Negus’ (Sp. Kapo) 62, 69–70, 331, 334 Pantcheff, Major Theodore ‘Bunny’ (British special investigator and author) xiii, 279, 315, 318 Pany, Kunes (Cz. KZ Lagerschreiber) 85–6, 128, 162, 171, 349, 355 Pappalettera, Vincenzo (It. KZ prisoner and co-author) 360, 365, 373

La Pasionaria (Dolores Ibarruri) 304–5, 308, 318, 388 Passet, Peter (Ger. KZ prisoner) 261 Patch, General Alexander McCarrell 225 Patton, General George Smith 225–6, 227, 228, 230, 233, 254, 256, 261, 273, 275 Paulus, Generalfeldmarschall Friedrich 350 Pausch, SS-Obersturmführer Max 98, 234, 372 Payrleitner, Hauptmann Alfred 169, 194, 195, 267, 268 Pecker y Cardona, Guillermo (Sp. diplomat) 144, 146, 147 Pekar, Dr Rudolf (Austrian Resistant) 169, 194 Pelzer, Josef (Ger. Green Kapo) 62, 162, 163 Perlado, José (Sp. KZ prisoner) 205, 348, 375 Persinger, Sgt. Robert (US Army) 267 Peter, Friedrich (Waffen-SS and Austrian political leader) 385 Peterseil (Austrian Nazi) 377 Pike, Pfc James S. (US Army) 213 Pirogov, Major Andreï (Sov. KZ prisoner) 166, 243, 248, 257–8, 356, 373, 375 Pister, SS-Standartenführer Hermann Franz Josef 73, 164, 225–6, 227, 371 Plus XII, Pope 381 Podlaha, Professor Dr Josef (Cz. surgeon and KZ prisoner) 24, 88–7, 170, 175, 259, 335, 339, 358 Pohl, SS-Obergruppenführer Oswald 18, 19, 171, 185, 192, 195, 319, 320 Pointner, Anna (Austrian Resistant) 206–7, 252, 282, 296, 297, 302, 309–10, 311, 312, 380 Pointner, Michael (Austrian Resistant) 368 Polish prisoners at Ebensee after the Liberation 268 at Gusen 318 at Hartheim 346 at Mauthausen 69, 71–2, 358, 359, 375, 377 Polk, Colonel (US Army) 268 Poltrum, Josef (Austrian Wehrmacht NCO) 169, 195, 268, 379 Pomante, Sgt. Acton V. (US Army) 267

430 INDEX

Ponzán Vidai, Paco alias Vidai (Sp. anarchist and Resistance leader) 353 Pope, George (inhabitant of Alderney) 314 ‘Popeye’ (Kapo) 47–8, 62, 245 Poprawka, Frantisek (Cz. KZ prisoner) 346 Poschacher, Anton (Austrian Nazi entrepreneur) 66, 297 Poschacher Kommando 66–8, 205–7, 332– 3, 368 Pozdniakoff, Colonel (Russian Liberation Army) 276 Prat (Sp. anarchist and KZ prisoner) 354 Prellberg von Brunswick, SSUnterscharführer Hans 54, 55, 237 Pribyll, SS-Scharführer Hermann 105–6 prisoners see camps and prisons Prominenten 16–17, 22, 24 at Mauthausen 51, 72, 73, 74, 75, 79 survivors 298 see also Climent Sarrión, Casimir; Diego, Juan de; García Alonso, Antonio Pstross, Jan (Cz. KZ prisoner) 171 Puhr (Lagerleiter Sylt) 5, 382 Puig, José (Sp. KZ prisoner) 368 Quenouille, Dr (Fr. KZ prisoner) 345 Quesada Herrerias, Félix (Sp. KZ prisoner) 311, 333 Queto, Victor (Sp. KZ prisoner) 169 Rabaté, Octave (Fr. KZ prisoner) 160, 166 Raga, Santiago (Sp. KZ prisoner) 96, 341, 348, 357 Ramón, Max (Sp. KZ prisoner) 199 Ramos Veleta, Conchita (Sp. KZ prisoner) 189–90 Rás, Teresa (Sp. widow) 146 Rasal (Sp. KZ prisoner) 368 Rasche, Oberleutnant Rudolf 221 Rau, Emil (Ger. Green Prominenter) 128 Rau, Heinrich (Ger. KZ prisoner) 158, 353 Rauchensteiner, Manfried (Austrian historian) 369 Rauff, SS-Obersturmbannführer Walter 110, 285–6, 346, 347, 381

Ravensbrück 15, 188–91, 326, 332, 333, 363 Razola Romo, Manuel (Sp. KZ prisoner and co-author) 68, 69, 71, 95, 102, 299, 324, 349 and Antonio García 305, 308 and the international committee 159, 160, 166 and resistance 123, 124, 348, 353 Triangle bleu 306 Reichleitner, SS-Hauptsturmführer Franz 286 Reimer, SS-Obersturmführer Guido 197, 198, 210, 211, 234, 369 Reinhart, Maj.-General Stanley E. (US Army) 231, 271, 278 religion 25, 26 Renaud, Charles (Fr. KZ prisoner and author) 48, 330, 334, 336 Rendulic, Generaloberst Dr Lothar 193, 221, 222–3, 230, 274, 275, 369 Renno, SS-Hauptsturmführer Georg 346 Richter, SS-Obersturmführer Dr Hermann 378 Ricken, SS-Hauptscharführer Paul 136–8, 140, 141, 142, 173–4, 176, 204, 283, 302, 309, 340, 358, 359 Ricol, Frédéric (Fr. KZ prisoner) 63, 332 Ricol, Lise (wife of Artur London) 336 Riemer, SS-Obersturmführer Otto 153, 154, 167, 344–5 Rienstra, Pfc Conrad (US Army) 213 Riquet, Père Michel (Fr. KZ prisoner) 26, 71, 76, 80–1, 334, 336 Rjabchinski, Michail (Sov. KZ prisoner) 183 Rodrigo Barroso, Lorenzo (Sp. KZ prisoner) 161 Rodríguez, Enrique (Sp. KZ prisoner) 331 Rodríguez Herruzo, José (Sp. KZ prisoner) 146 Rodríguez, Marcelo (Sp. KZ prisoner) 124, 159, 205 Rohde, Oberstleutnant 6, 315 Röhm, Ernst (SA leader) 61, 318 Roig, Montserrat (Sp. historian) 26, 34, 246 Rojo Lluch, Gen. Vicente (Sp. Rep. Army) 317 Romanian Jews see Jews

INDEX 431

Rommel, Generalfeldmarschall Erwin 169, 193 Romney, Lionel (US Merchant Marine and KZ prisoner) 372 Rösener, SS-Obergruppenführer Erwin 277 Rosenthal, Pfc Albert Jerome (US Army) 234 Roth, SS-Hauptscharführer Martin 88, 188, 340, 353–4, 363, 383 Rousset, David (Fr. KZ prisoner) 75, 151–2, 324 Rovira Rovira, Estéban (Sp. KZ prisoner) 147 Ruaux, Jean-Yves (Fr. historian) 316, 380 Rubio, Javier (Sp. historian) 314 Rübli, Jean-Maurice (CICR official) 196 Ruiz, Lt. Enrique (Sp. KZ prisoner) 317 Rusinek, Kazimierz (Cz. KZ prisoner) 85, 166, 167 Russian prisoners see Soviet prisoners Sachsenhausen 15 Sala, José (Sp. KZ prisoner) 299 Samuell, Lt. Edward W. (US Army) 274, 275 Sánchez, Angel (Sp. KZ prisoner) 157, 353 Sandler, Major Charles R. (US Army) 212 Santísteban Castillo, Manolo (Sp. KZ prisoner) 299 Santísteban Castillo, Ramiro (Sp. KZ prisoner) 49, 65–6, 67, 91–2, 299, 301, 304, 310, 327, 339, 363, 386 Santos Fernández, Agustín (Sp. KZ prisoner) 347 Sanz (Sp. KZ prisoner from Madrid) 189 Sanz, José (Sp. KZ prisoner) 99 Sasko, Karl (Austrian Green) 199 Saunders, Sgt. Harry C. (US Army) 234, 236, 237, 238, 240, 241, 254, 255, 256, 372, 375 Savourez, Georges (Fr. KZ prisoner) 354 Scheidler, Arthur (adjutant to Kaltenbrunner) 281 Schinlauer, SS-Unterscharführer Hermann Peter 135, 136, 140, 175, 176, 204, 309 Schirach, Baldur von (Gauleiter Niederdonau) 340

Schlier see Mauthausen Nebenlager Schloss Hartheim see Hartheim Schloss Rothschild, German resistance at 274–5 Schmeling, Hans (Ger. Green Kapo) 191 Schmeling, Max (Ger. boxer) 330 Schmettow, General Graf Rudolf von 3, 279 Schmidhuber, SS-Oberführer 220, 369 Schmidt, Dr (SS doctor) 15 Schmidt, SS-Standartenführer 226 Schmidt, SS-Schütze Michael 383 Schmidt-Jortzig, Edzard (Ger. Minister) 292 Schneider, Kurt see Geissler, Kurt Schneidereit, Otto (Austrian Green Kapo) 331 Schockweiller, Albert (Lux. KZ prisoner) 167 Scholtes, Camille (Lux. KZ prisoner) 168, 169 Schöps, Josef (Ger. Lagerältester) 61, 344 Schoyvaloff, Capt. Peter (US Army) 371 Schröck, Martina (German student) 309, 347 Schuler, SS-Sturmbannführer Dr 195 Schultz (Feldkommandant of Jersey) 4, 315 Schultz, SS-Obersturmführer Karl (alias Kurt Müller) 16, 19, 34, 88, 134, 209, 302, 328, 329, 345, 358, 362, 363, 382 arrest, trial and imprisonment of 289, 291 background and character 51, 53–5 and Block 20 178 and Grabowski 141, 174 and the photographic laboratory 136, 137 Schwalm, Oberstleutnant 279, 315, 382 Schwammberger, Josef (SS Lagerführer) 292 Schwarts, SS-Haupsturmführer 195 Schwartzenberg, Jacques and Raymond (Fr. KZ prisoners) 92 Schwarzenberg, Prof. Dr Léon (Fr. oncologist) 342 Schwechat (camp) 344 Schweiger, Josef (Austrian KZ prisoner) 16 Schwend, SS-Sturmbannführer Friedrich 362 Schwindemann, Hans (KZ Kapo) 367 Secours suisse aux Enfants 314

432 INDEX

Seibel, Lt.-Col. Richard R. (US Army) 238, 240–1, 242, 253–4, 255, 256, 257–8, 259, 260, 261, 367, 373, 375, 376, 379 and the death of Ziereis 263 and the link-up with the Soviets 272 Seidler, SS-Hauptsturmführer Franz 96, 193, 211, 343, 364 Sellers, S/Sgt. Robert (US Army) 213, 235, 237, 372 Sempere Pérez, Juan and Miguel (Sp. KZ prisoners) 298, 368, 386 Semprún, Jorge (Sp.-Fr. KZ prisoner and author 29, 158, 308, 322, 330, 337, 353 Serra (Sp. KZ prisoner) 356 Serrano, Patricio (Sp. KZ prisoner) 357 Serrano Súñer, Ramón (Sp. Minister) 11, 144, 316–7 Shakov, Semjon (Sov. KZ prisoner) 183 Sheppard, Sir Robert (British Special Missions and KZ prisoner) 78, 165, 229, 330, 366 Sik, Ota (Cz. KZ prisoner) 335, 336 Simon, Lt. (Fr. army) 9 Skorzeny, SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto 223, 277, 369 Slatton, Pfc John L. (US Army) 236, 237, 238, 372 Smirnov, S. (Sov. writer) 242, 360 Smolianov, Salomon (Ger. KZ prisoner) 188 Smythe, Colonel (US Army) 274 Snow, Brigadier Alfred E. (British Army) 279 Sobibor (camp) 346 Sokolov, Major Vladimir ‘Kostev’ (Sov. POW) 168 Sombeck, Fräulein Brigitte (SS secretary) 55 Sommer, Martin (SS officer) 380 Soviet Army assault from the east 219–24 and the final German surrender 276, 279 and food supplies for the liberated Mauthausen 260–1 link-up with the Americans 270–2 Soviet prisoners in the Channel Islands 4, 6, 315 at Mauthausen 69, 70, 161, 268, 359 break-out from the Death Block 178– 84

Spaniards boys at Mauthausen 65–8 deported to Germany 9–10 refused prisoner of war of status 11 women and children 64, 65 see also communists, Spanish Spanish Civil War 80, 138, 147, 148, 157, 158, 247 Spanish diplomats in Berlin and Vienna 144– 7, 351–2 Spatzenegger, SS-Hauptscharführer Johann 57, 62, 90, 91, 288 Spears, Flight Lt. Toni (RAF officer and KZ prisoner) 372 Speer, Reichsleiter Albert (Minister of Armaments) 340, 381 Spiegel-Marek, Tilly (Austrian writer) 309 SS and the evacuation of Buchenwald 227– 8 and the evacuation of the Nebenlager 199–200, 203 at Gusen 96, 298 and the Liberation Dachau 228 Ebensee 265–6 Mauthausen 242, 243, 244, 245, 262 members brought to justice 280–92 Panzer divisions 220, 324 surrender of the Waffen-SS divisions 278–9 visits to the Pointner home 310, 311 see also Mauthausen Hauptlager, SS St Ägyd am Neuwald (Aussenkommando) 320 St Valentin (camp) 320 Stadler, SS-Brigadeführer Sylvester 222, 369 Stalags 10, 33, 147, 316 Stalin, Josef 184, 308, 379, 387 Stalingrad, Battle of 17, 159, 172 Stange, SS-Standartenführer 220 Stangl, SS-Obersturmführer Franz Paul 286– 7, 346 Starr, Capt. John (Br. SOE agent and KZ prisoner) 372 Stasek, Vilém (Cz. KZ prisoner) 327, 387 Staudinger, Cpl. Charles (US Army) 274–5 Stein, Louis (US historian) 316

INDEX 433

Steinacker, Fritz (Ger. lawyer) 383 Steiner, Frau (SS secretary) 55 Steininger, Franz-Joseph (Austrian Black Kapo) 159, 353–4 Steinman, Frau (SS secretary) 55 Steinmann, SS-Oberscharführer Willy 110, 117 Steyr see Mauthausen Nebenlager Storper, Armand (Fr. KZ prisoner) 289 Stransky, Milos (Cz. KZ prisoner) 372 Strasser, Anna (Austrian Resistant and author) 64–5, 332 Strauss, Lily (gypsy, in Mauthausen’s brothel) 335 Streitwieser, SS-Obersturmführer Anton (alias Klaus Werner Krug) arrest and trial of 288–9, 291, 382 background 51, 56 and liquidation of prisoners 197–8, 199, 366 and Nebenlager 95, 107–8, 365 Streitwieser, Käte 56, 93, 288, 291 Streitwolf, Georg (Ger. Green Kapo) 80, 128, 337 Struller, Karl (SS NCO) 36 Suárez, Francisco (Sp. KZ prisoner) 149 Súñer, Raimundo (Sp. KZ prisoner) 117– 18, 367 Sunyer, Lluis (Sp. KZ prisoner) 366 Suslak, Franz (Ger. Green Kapo) 74, 106, 341, 345 Tapia, Mimi (Sp. KZ prisoner) 190 Tarragó, Juan (Sp. KZ prisoner) 126, 138, 140, 172, 177, 302, 307 Taylor, Lt. Jack H. (USNR and KZ prisoner) 237–8, 254, 255, 258, 338, 346, 372 Tchubchenkov, Col. Kirill (Sov. Air Force and KZ prisoner) 359 Teichmann, Dr (Kripo chief) 181 Termens, Juan (Sp. KZ prisoner) 344 Terres, Antonio (Sp. musician and KZ prisoner) 337, 347 Thaelmann, Ernst (Ger. KPD leader and KZ prisoner) 158

Theiss, Carl (Alderney camp commandant) 279 Thomas, Yeo (Br. RAF officer and KZ prisoner) 355 ‘Thunderbolt’ veterans 240 Tibaldi, Italo (It. KZ prisoner) 167 Tiefenbacher, A. (Ger. KZ prisoner) 110 Tietz, OT-Haupttruppführer Karl 6–7 Tillard, Paul (Fr. KZ prisoner and author) xiv, 24, 49, 69, 73, 88, 151, 152, 154, 319, 321, 345, 379 Tillon, Charles (Fr. KZ prisoner and author) 293 Tito, Marshal né Josip Broz 277, 278 Tobiasek, Jaroslav (Cz. KZ prisoner) 80 Tomás (Sp. Kapo) 62, 343 Tomás Tomás, Tomás (Sp. KZ prisoner) 124 Torbuccio, Sgt. Charles (US Army) 241 Totenkopfverbände 31 Trat, David (Fr. KZ prisoner) 6 Trauner, Leopold (Austrian manager) 98 Treblinka (camp) 346 Trum, SS-Oberscharführer Andreas 57, 88, 161, 162, 187, 288, 328, 363 Uiberreidier, Dr Siegfried, Gauleiter of Steiermark 223 Ukrainian prisoners at Gusen 192 at Mauthausen 70 Ukrainzev, Lieutenant Viktor (Sov. POW) 183 Ulbrecht, Josef (Cz. KZ prisoner) 83, 338 Ullmann, SS-Hauptscharführer Johann 80, 337 Unek, Franz (Austrian Green Lagerältester) 61, 245 United States of America, trials of war criminals 287–8 United States Army assault from the west 219, 225–32 and the final German surrender 273, 276–7 handing over of Mauthausen to the Soviets 294 and the liberation of Ebensee 267–9

434 INDEX

link-up with the Soviets 270–2 return to Mauthausen 253–63 troops entering Mauthausen 213, 214, 215 Urpí, Tomás (Sp. KZ prisoner) 245 Vaillant-Couturier, Marie-Claude (Fr. KZ prisoner) 282, 283 Valenzano, Luigi Gino (It. KZ prisoner and author) 329, 335, 336, 344, 362, 377 Valley, Emile (Fr. KZ prisoner) 245, 247, 365 Vanderhagen, Pfc Robert P. (US Army) 270 Van Fleet, Maj.-Gen. James A. (US Army) 228, 275 van Hemert, Gerard (Dutch-US SOE agent and KZ prisoner) 354 Velasco Zapata, Antonio (Sp. KZ prisoner) 114, 116–17, 316 Verge Armengol, Ramón (Sp. KZ prisoner) 87, 258, 299, 358–9, 386 Verneuil, Henri (Fr. film producer) 361 Veronesi, Daniel (Italian KZ prisoner) 152– 4, 167, 291, 352 Vetter, SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr Helmut 97, 288 Vidal (Sp. KZ prisoner) 4 Vienna battle for 192, 220–2, 223 Spanish Consulate in 144–7 Vilanova, Luis Antonio (Sp. historian) 32–3, 48, 88, 245, 304, 306, 316, 321, 323, 324, 340 Vives, Pere (Sp. KZ prisoner) 84 Vlasov, Generalleutnant Audrey (Russian Liberation Army) 70, 276 Vlassov, Lt. Col. Nikolaï (Sov. Air Force and KZ prisoner) 359 Vöcklabruch 103, 117, 318 Vogel, Josef (Austrian Resistant) 169 Volodka (Pol. KZ prisoner) 179 Wagner, SS-Oberscharführer Gustav 286–7 Waldheim, Kurt (Austrian President) 385 Walendy, Udo (Ger. author) 348 Walker, Lt. Gen. Walton H. (US Army) 228, 231, 275, 277

Wasitzky, SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr Erich 36, 87, 88 Wassner, SS-Oberscharführer Karl 96 Waysand, Prof. Dr Georges (Fr. nuclear physicist and author) 363 Weber, Padre Anton 284–5 Weber, Karl (Ger. Green Lagerschreiber) 127, 128, 349 Weber, SS-Oberscharführer Willy 126, 349 Webkowski, Prof. Marian (Pol. academic and KZ prisoner) 377 Wegner, Konrad (Ger. KZ prisoner) 168 Wehrmacht 99, 169, 170, 171, 185, 192, 315 and the Soviet assault from the east 219– 24 surrender to the Allies 275–9 Weigl-Hallenberg, Valentine (Austrian Resistant and author) 333 Wessely, Franz (KZ prisoner) 56 Westarp, Countess Gisela von 281 Wetterwald, Dr François (Fr. KZ prisoner and author) 49, 267, 340–1, 345, 352 Wickenhäuser (SS officer) 355 Wiesenthal, Simon (Austrian KZ prisoner and author) 26, 237, 241, 270, 284, 285, 287, 292, 326, 361, 372 Wietersheim, Generalleutenant Wend von 232 Willemin, Georges (CICR) 386 Windner family (Mauthausen) 325 Winklehner, Franz (Austrian Resistant) 297, 333 Wirth, SS-Obersturmführer Christian 286, 346 Wittberger family (Lanzenberg) 183, 361 Wöhler, General der Infanterie Otto 220, 221, 222 Wolf (Ger. Kapo) 62 Wolff, SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Friedrich Otto 381 Wolter, SS-Sturmbannführer Dr Waldemar 84, 336 women Czechs 74 evacuated prisoners 189–200, 195–6, 200, 364

INDEX 435

prostitutes at Mauthausen 72–3, 81, 192, 335, 363 Wuggenig, Richard (Green Kapo) 331 WVHA 18–21 Yakovlev, Aleksandr N. (Russ. historian) 379 Yale, Colonel WesleyW. (US Army) 229, 232, 233, 240, 254, 255, 375 Yébenes Romo, Felipe (Sp. KZ prisoner) 39, 114, 115, 118, 125, 204, 356, 375 Yugoslavia and the final German surrender 277–8 prisoners escaping to 184 and the Soviet advance 224 Yugoslav prisoners at Mauthausen 359 Zabolotniak, Colonel Grigori (Sov. KZ prisoner) 181 Zach, Franz (Austrian Green Kapo) 331 Zalud, Kurt (Swiss KZ prisoner) 314 Zaremba, Johann (Ger. Green Kapo) 62, 136, 331, 357 Zelger, Willibald (Br. KZ prisoner) 363 Zemet, David (Pol. KZ prisoner) 367 Zemkalo, Nikolaï (Sov. KZ prisoner) 183 Zetterberg, Harriet (researcher) 381 Ziereis, SS-Standartenführer Franz 31, 36, 40, 53, 54, 84, 96, 327, 329, 330, 355, 363, 374, 375 and Allied bombing raids 156 and Allied prisoners 161, 162–3, 164 background and character 51–2 and Boix 304 and the break-out from Block 20 181 capture, interrogation and death 251, 262–3, 350, 366, 367, 378 and evacuation of prisoners 196, 197, 198, 199 and hangings 112 and Himmler’s visits to Mauthausen 130 and the Kapos 61 leaves Mauthausen 208, 209, 211, 377 on liquidation of prisoners 170, 172, 185, 192, 193 and the mobile gas chamber 110, 347 and Nebenlager 95 and the photo laboratory 141, 204

and Soviet prisoners 70–1 and Spanish barbers 125, 358 Ziereis, Ida (wife of Ziereis) 52, 125, 209, 262, 327, 368, 378 Ziereis, Siegfried (son of Ziereis) 52, 263 Zipper, Herbert (Austrian musician and KZ prisoner) 337 Zoller, SS-Hauptsturmführer Viktor 61, 331, 355 Zuske, Major (Wehrmacht) 315 Zutter, SS-Obersturmführer Adolf 53, 164, 283, 288, 382