Читать книгу Never Forget Your Name - Alwin Meyer - Страница 15

Robert Büchler In summer 1940, the Slovak government began to compel the Jews, who had been excluded from the country’s social life and economy, to carry out forced labour. In autumn 1941, the conversion of the former military barracks in Sered’ and Nováky began. There, and in the existing camp at Vyhne, the Jewish population was to be isolated and concentrated. The authorities saw this as a stage on the way to the final ‘solution of the Jewish question’ in Slovakia.¹

One of these camps, Nováky, was around 40 kilometres from Topol’čany, where Robert Büchler and his family lived. Many Jewish men aged between 16 and 60 were moved there from the town and forced to work.

In 1942, the rumours regarding the permanent expulsion of the Jews from Slovakia began to increase. The pro-Nazi president of Slovakia, the Catholic cleric Jozef Tiso, denied these plans. But just a few days later, on 27, 28 and 31 March, the first transports with young Jews left Topol’čany via Slovak transit camps to the East.² ‘This came like a bolt from the blue.’ The Jews were taken completely by surprise. They couldn’t believe what was happening. ‘The community was in shock. And before we knew it, hundreds of railway wagons had been loaded up.’

The government authorities attempted to calm things with lies, saying that the expulsions would stop. The Germans were only interested in young persons capable of working. By the beginning of April, this had already been revealed to be a subterfuge. ‘The next hunt for Jews in Topol’čany began.’ This time whole families were taken. ‘One train after the other stood in the station, and many brothers and sisters set off on the road to no return.’

By August, the Jewish population of Topol’čany had been literally decimated. Nine of Josef Büchler’s siblings had been deported with their families. Only 618 Jews of ‘importance for the economy’ remained. And they looked to the future with anxiety.³

Channa Markowicz In March 1939, Hungary had re-annexed Carpatho-Ukraine from Czechoslovakia,⁴ including Irshava, Channa Markowicz’s hometown. The first anti-Jewish laws were soon to follow.

The eyes of the occupiers were drawn particularly to Jews who, despite having lived in many cases for two or three generations in the Carpathian region – the mountainous area originally belonging to Czechoslovakia, now in Ukraine – had not become citizens or could not prove their citizenship. Jews who could not prove that their ancestors had lived there permanently before 1867 were especially endangered.⁵ This also applied to relatives of the Markowicz family who had immigrated from Poland.

By the end of August 1941, around 18,000 ‘foreign’ Jews, as they were called, had been deported by the Hungarian gendarmerie via eastern Galicia to Kamenez-Podolsk [Kam’yanets’ Podil’s’kyi] in Ukraine. Most of them were from the part of the Carpathians annexed by Hungary from Czechoslovakia in 1939. In Kamenez-Podolsk, 14,000 to 16,000 Jews deported from Hungary were murdered on 27 and 28 August 1941, together with several thousand Jews from the surrounding area. Apart from the SS and men from Police Battalion 320, members of the Ukrainian self-defence and a Hungarian pioneer unit took part. Altogether, 23,000 Jewish children, women and men perished on those two August days in 1941.⁶ ‘The first of our relatives were deported in 1942. At the time we thought it couldn’t get worse than it already was.’ They were wrong.

Eduard Kornfeld One day in Bratislava, came the order ‘All juveniles or all girls, I can’t remember which, have to register.’ The family didn’t know what to do. Was it going to get worse? Everyone was very afraid. There were rumours of deportation. No one knew where to. On 26 March 1942, the first transport with young Jewish women and girls from Slovakia reached Auschwitz extermination camp. Auschwitz Chronicle records: ‘999 Jewish women from Poprad in Slovakia are sent to the women’s section of Auschwitz. This is the first registered transport … The Jewish women get uniforms that belonged to the murdered Russian POWs.’⁷

The first eight Slovak transports to the East contained only young Jews – over 8,000 children and juveniles. This meant that, by the beginning of April 1942, most of the young Jews were no longer in Slovakia. From March to October 1942, around 58,000 Slovak Jews were deported, particularly to Auschwitz, Majdanek and Treblinka.⁸ Fewer than 300 were to return from the camps.⁹

Nazi Germany demanded RM 500 for each deportee for ‘retraining’. In return, it promised the Slovak government that no Jews would come back and that Germany would not assert any further claims to their assets.¹⁰

The Kornfelds had decided in early 1942 to flee to Hungary. They didn’t want to wait until it was their turn: ‘In Hungary, my parents believed, it was still relatively safe for us Jews.’ Eduard’s 15-year-old brother Heinrich and his 11-year-old sister Mathilde were to be transported over the border by a smuggler, a farmer. The other members of the family intended to follow a few days later. On 7 May 1942, they were ready. Shortly before they were to leave, Simon and Rosa Kornfeld decided that it was better for the girl Mathilde to remain with them. ‘Eduard, you should go with Heinrich.’

‘So I put on one suit and another one on top of it. That’s all. My father blessed us and promised that they would soon follow. No one expected that we would never see each other again. It was a farewell for ever.’

The farmer collected them from their home. ‘My father paid the man. Outside the town, there was a horse-drawn cart.’ This would take them to Vel’ký Meder, which had been annexed by Hungary along with the entire south of Slovakia.¹¹ Eduard’s grandfather and one of his uncles lived there. Eduard and Heinrich were to stay there a few days and then make their way to Budapest. The farmer hurried them along. They had to cross the border before it got light.

‘We followed the railway line in the direction of Vel’ký Meder. From time to time, we placed our ears to the tracks to hear whether a train was coming.’ When it got light, the farmer left them. He said: ‘It’s too dangerous for me now. Just keep going straight on. You’ll come to a village soon. Take the train from there to Vel’ký Meder.’ They had arranged with their father that they would give the farmer a note as a sign when they arrived at their destination. Before the departure, their father had given them a piece of paper torn into two unequal halves and given one half to Eduard’s brother Heinrich. He had kept the other half himself.

If my father was given the piece of paper intact by the farmer, he would know that we had arrived safely in Vel’ký Meder and the man would get the rest of his money.

As the farmer had not brought us to the agreed destination, my brother ripped off a small piece. I don’t know if my mother and father understood the sign. Unfortunately, I never saw them again.

They reached the village between 5 and 6 a.m. An old peasant woman asked the boys: ‘Are you Slovak Jews?’

‘No! No! We’re not from Slovakia!’

‘Listen, I’m a Jew. You don’t need to be afraid. I will just warn you that your Shabbat suits tell everyone right away that you’re not from here. Come with me.’ The woman took the boys home with her. ‘First of all, we gulped down water like crazy.’ They were given something to eat and then slept for a few hours. So that they wouldn’t draw attention to themselves, the woman had advised them to take the train to Vel’ký Meder in the evening. ‘There are so many people, including farmers from other villages. We were simply to mingle with them all.’

The train journey to Vel’ký Meder was without incident. They went to their grandfather’s house. He lived there with their youngest uncle, his wife and their six children aged between 1 and 7 years. The brothers couldn’t stay there because they would all have had to remain in hiding. ‘We were in the country illegally. And besides we were meant to take the train to Budapest, where our parents and sister were to come.’ They took the train to Budapest. Their father’s uncle lived there. Eduard and Heinrich lived with him for the first few weeks. ‘He was very helpful and did his best, like a replacement father.’ But the family was very poor and had lots of children. Besides, ‘his wife didn’t want to hide us’. She was terrified that the boys would be discovered during a raid.

‘We waited impatiently for our parents and sister to arrive. For weeks, even months, we heard nothing from them. We became increasingly worried as the days went by. It was unbearable.’

The brothers were living in terrible conditions. As his own family all lived in a very small apartment, their uncle had rented a room for them with a non-Jewish family. ‘The room had no windows, with just a small opening onto the kitchen. It was so small that there was only space for one bed, no chairs or a table. When we switched on the light, everything was covered in red bugs. They had a very painful bite.’ During the day, Eduard and Heinrich stayed out of the room. As ‘illegals’, they lived in constant fear of a raid. They had told the landlord that they attended ‘some school or other’ in Budapest. They promised repeatedly to register soon with the authorities.

They normally hid in the morning in one of the numerous synagogues in Budapest among the Talmud students there. ‘No one took any notice of us.’

So they wouldn’t starve, they had to think up some scheme every day. Sometimes they bought poppyseed cake, which they couldn’t actually afford. There were many other things Eduard and Heinrich couldn’t have bought either, even if they had had the money, because they needed ration cards: for fat, ersatz coffee, sugar, bread, meat. The same applied to restaurants.

So I stood at the counter, took a piece from the tray and bit into it. While the saleswoman was busy with other customers, I took a second small bite. I held the cake in front of me. When the woman looked away, I quickly stuffed the entire cake in my mouth. And then I took another one, bit a piece off it, and held it as before.

If possible, we repeated this several times. When the saleswoman looked away, we chewed. If she looked in our direction, we held the cake. This only worked when the shop was full.

Another strategy was to buy forged ration cards, which they sold for a profit to Slovak refugees. Eduard Kornfeld remembered all these events every day of his life as if they had just happened. Then he got a nervous disease, probably as a result of undernourishment, and kept on making involuntary movements.

One day the brothers ran into one of Eduard’s former schoolmates, who was also in Budapest illegally. He told them: ‘Your parents and sister were deported.’ This news was ‘like a slap in the face’. ‘We didn’t yet know anything about the gas chambers but I still had a feeling.’ It was ‘terrible – indescribable’.

‘I’m at a loss today to explain how we managed for a whole year’, he once said. ‘But at some point I couldn’t go on anymore. I was completely emaciated and terribly hungry.’ Eduard had discovered in the meantime that refugees under the age of 15 could be legalized if they had relatives in Hungary who would stand surety for them. He knew he would have to keep quiet about the fact that he had been there for over a year, and that he would be interned initially. Without his brother – ‘he was already 15’ – Eduard went to the police and said: ‘I arrived this evening from Slovakia. I’m a Jew.’ He was arrested and sent to an internment camp. The police took his personal details and questioned him:

‘When did you arrive?’’

‘Last night.’

‘Who brought you over?’

‘A farmer.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘I don’t know. It was dark. I didn’t get a good look at his face.’

‘What? You went with him and don’t know what he looked like?’ Eduard got a ‘hard smack’. ‘It knocked me over. I understood straightaway. The last thing I wanted was to get hit. I imagined someone and described him.’

‘You see, you knew after all! Why didn’t you say so straightaway?’ Eduard remained in the camp for six weeks. His uncle from Vel’ký Meder, where he and his brother had stayed at the start of their flight, stood surety for him – for accommodation, food, clothing – for everything the boy needed for his daily existence.

‘So I returned to the small town of Vel’ký Meder.’ Once a week, he had to report to the local gendarmerie.

Heinz Kounio On 6 April 1941, the German Wehrmacht invaded Greece. The Greek army, supported by a small number of British soldiers, could not prevent the advance. Greece was divided up between the allies Bulgaria, Germany and Italy. Nazi Germany secured strategically important points for itself, including the island of Crete and the port city of Thessaloniki, which was occupied by the Wehrmacht on 9 April.¹²

Heinz Kounio recalls: ‘We knew beforehand that the Germans were going to enter Thessaloniki on that day. I can remember the sunset on the evening before. The sky was red, completely red. Like blood.’ The next day the Germans arrived. ‘We all stayed at home. We heard a car. A small jeep – this Volkswagen – stopped in front of our house. We observed it through a crack in the window shutter. On the vehicle was a big red swastika.’ Someone got out. The doorbell rang. Then – something Heinz Kounio is still unable to understand today – his father, ‘although he could speak German well’, said to his wife: ‘Hella, open the door.’ She opened the door, where a young officer was standing. ‘He was nice’ and asked: ‘Do you speak German?’ Hella Kounio said that she did. ‘Good, I would like to talk to you.’

‘Please come in’; Hella Kounio led the young man onto the terrace, and he said: ‘Very nice, dear lady. Please tell your husband to come with me. Don’t be afraid. I’ll bring him back. But he has to go with me to the shop. We need to get something from it.’ Salvator Kounio came onto the terrace. ‘He was now more courageous.’ The officer produced an invoice and said: ‘You received thirty-three Leica cameras from Germany. Where are the cameras?’ They were whole sets with a camera, a normal lens, a wide-angle and a telephoto lens. His father said to the officer: ‘I’m sorry but these cameras have not yet arrived. But I know where they are.’

‘Where?’

‘At the post office. They haven’t yet been released by customs.’ As the building was already closed, the director of the post office was found. He gave the cameras to the officer. The officer wrote on a piece of paper confirming the seizure of the sets. Then he brought Heinz Kounio back home unharmed. ‘Those of us who had had to stay home were so relieved!’ The thirty-three camera sets were sent back to Germany. The family did not receive any compensation. Every set was worth 38 gold pounds, which is what the pound sterling was unofficially called in those days. This was a bitter loss for the Kounio family. ‘That was our first contact with the Germans who had entered Saloniki.’

Some time later, two rooms in the Kounios’ house were requisitioned. A commissar and his orderly from the Gestapo moved in.

The Gestapo were responsible for systematically combating supposed political opponents of the Nazi regime. They were able to make arrests without legal basis. The people in their clutches were frequently maltreated, transported to concentration camps or summarily executed.¹³

As the Gestapo commissar was courteous towards the Kounios, grandfather Ernst Löwy in particular – who had had to flee from Karlsbad with his wife eighteen months previously to escape the Nazis – saw this as confirmation of his basic estimation of the Germans: a cultured people who had produced Bach, Beethoven, Goethe, Heine and Schiller could not be so evil. Of course, there were the brutal SS and some other bad Germans. But, thought Ernst Löwy, they were the exception.

In reality, however, the face of Thessaloniki had changed completely. The Germans were everywhere, giving orders and controlling everything that went on in the city. The 55,000 Jews in Thessaloniki – like their brothers and sisters in the other occupied countries – were quite literally caught in the German death trap.

Just a few days after the Nazis arrived, the Jews were banned from visiting cafés, cake shops and other public establishments. All Jews had to hand in their radios. Several Jewish newspapers were closed. Jewish houses and the Hirsch hospital were seized and were now in the hands of the German army. Finally, the members of the Jewish community council were arrested.¹⁴ A short time afterwards, the Germans systematically looted the 500-year-old Jewish cultural and literary treasures in the city: in synagogues, private houses and public libraries, everything old and valuable was confiscated and sent to Germany.¹⁵

Meanwhile, Salvator Kounio was still able to go about his business, albeit at great risk. And the two children were still able to go to school. As their previous school had been requisitioned by the Germans, however, the classes were taught in a replacement building. Heinz and Erica no longer laughed. And they were not blind to their parents’ constant fear.

On Shabbat, 11 July 1942, the public registration of all Jewish men between 18 and 45 years of age was ordered. On that day, between 8,000 and 9,000 Jews were to assemble on Plateia Eleftheria, ‘Freedom Square’. They were forced to stand to attention in the heat for eight hours. Anyone who moved had to march on the spot until they were exhausted. At the end of the day, some 3,500 Jewish men were taken away to work as forced labourers in road and airport construction. Around 400 men died within a few months as a result of the gruelling working conditions.¹⁶

Following drawn-out negotiations with the German occupiers, the Jewish community managed in October 1942 to have their fellow religionists set free against payment of a large ransom. At the same time, the Germans demanded that the 500-year-old Jewish cemetery be handed over for ‘military purposes’. The Jewish community refused.

In spite of this, the cemetery was still razed to the ground. No grave was spared. The gravestones were all broken up. The bones of the dead were scattered everywhere. The stones were used for road building in Thessaloniki and elsewhere. The German occupiers even built a swimming pool with them. The Jews of Thessaloniki were able to salvage only a few graves.¹⁷ And on the expropriated cemetery site, the city of Thessaloniki built a university.¹⁸

The 300,000-square-metre Jewish cemetery, probably the largest in the world, was no more. The graves of around 400,000 Jewish children, women and men aged 12 years or more at the time of death were destroyed. And the graves of around 400,000 children less than 12 years old no longer existed.¹⁹

A few months previously, Salvator Kounio received a letter from a business associate in Germany, the owner of an optical company, who asked him to look out for his son, a soldier who had been posted to Thessaloniki. Heinz Kounio well remembers the contents of the letter, which were approximately as follows: ‘Salvator, may I ask you a favour? My son is coming to Saloniki. He is very close to his family. Could you please look out for him? He might need your assistance.’ As if in those days looking after a Wehrmacht soldier was the ‘most natural thing in the world’ for a Jewish family like the Kounios. And, indeed, a few days later, the doorbell rang. The Wehrmacht soldier Helmut Held, son of the German business associate, called on the Kounios. He was invited to lunch the following Sunday. Afterwards, he came often to the Kounios, played with Heinz and Erika and had discussions with their parents.

‘The German soldier was very nice. He stayed in Saloniki for about a month. Then he was suddenly posted to Crete.’ Some time later, the German police stormed the house and took their parents and the grandfather who had fled from Karlsbad. ‘They were locked up by the Gestapo.’ Around three weeks later, they were fortunately transferred to another prison that was not supervised by the Gestapo.

Erika and Heinz had to remain alone in their house. ‘The other grandparents had already died.’ A former family housekeeper, relatives and friends helped them to manage. They had also done everything possible from the outset to obtain the release of Salvator and Hella Kounio and Ernst Löwy and consulted lawyers. It took several days to achieve. They were overjoyed to be able to embrace their mother, father and grandfather again. It turned out that they had been arrested because a thank-you letter from Helmut Held opened by the German censors had contained the comment: ‘Great preparations are being made here in Crete for the war in Africa.’

‘The young man had basically blabbed secret war information. That’s why the Gestapo interrogated our parents and grandfather.’ Later, the Kounio family learned that Helmut Held had criticized Hitler while drunk. ‘The young man was arrested and sentenced to death.’

‘As a result of all these events, we had now completely lost our childhood innocence.’

Herbert Adler One day, probably in February 1941, in Frankfurt am Main:

Two plain-clothed police officers came into my class and spoke with my teacher. Then they stood outside the door. Mr Erb said: ‘Herbert, come here.’ I went to him. ‘Yes, sir, what’s the matter?’ All kinds of thoughts occurred to me. ‘Have you done something wrong?’ I was a typical Frankfurt lad and had got up to mischief before. But I couldn’t think of anything. The teacher said to me: ‘Herbert, listen, there are two criminal police officers who want you to go with them. Apparently you’ve done something. Go with them. You’ll be back tomorrow.’ He probably knew better but wanted to reassure me because he didn’t know how to help me.

The boy took his satchel and left the classroom. Outside, Herbert saw that his brother Heinz was also there. They were brought home by two Gestapo men in a police car. The whole family was already there. ‘They had fetched my father from work.’

Herbert, his parents and his six brothers and sisters were taken to the camp for ‘gypsies’ in Dieselstrasse. They were only allowed to take the most necessary belongings. Everything else, they were told, would be brought to them the next day in their new home. This was an empty promise. Their furniture, the entire contents of their apartment, were seized, including a harp and some valuable violins. His father was also a very good musician who liked to play music in his spare time. They didn’t ever get anything back.

In the Dieselstrasse camp the Adler family lived in a small old wooden construction wagon. ‘There was no water, light or toilets.’ The furniture consisted of an old table and two chairs. At the back were two jacked-up planks for sleeping – for nine people. And for this makeshift accommodation the camp inmates even had to pay rent to the city of Frankfurt.

In May 1941, there were 160 Roma and Sinti in the Dieselstrasse camp. It was fenced in by chicken wire and two rows of barbed wire and was controlled and guarded by the police. There were roll calls every day. The inmates had to stand to attention and give the Nazi salute. Camp commandant Johannes Himmelheber used a whip to maintain discipline in the camp. At every opportunity, the police threatened to have the inmates transferred to a concentration camp and caused increasing anxiety and fear in this way. And Sinti and Roma were indeed deported to concentration camps on the basis of reports by Himmelheber.

After the war, Himmelheber continued to serve in the police. He was able to enjoy his retirement in 1952 until his death in 1971.

Herbert Adler: ‘After our arrival in early 1941, we children were not allowed to leave the camp. My father and other adults were initially allowed to go to work outside.’ When they first moved into the camp, he was still convinced that his father would fix it and that they would soon be able to leave again. Every day this hope dwindled, ‘until I realized what they really had in store for us’.

After an armaments company purchased the site and claimed it to enlarge its operations, the camp was closed in autumn 1942.²⁰ The remaining Roma and Sinti, including the Adler family, were moved to the new camp in Kruppstrasse. ‘The conditions there were just as bad. And in the Kruppstrasse camp, we children were forced to work, mainly loading trucks with cobblestones.’ Also his little brother Rolf. He had just turned 9 years old.

‘One day, when we had loaded the truck and were driving to unload it, he fell out. We shouted out loud. But the driver didn’t react. My little brother was somehow dragged along. He died as a result. That was my first encounter with death.’