On Thursday the 10th November I was arrested in the street early in the day by a civil guard and taken to the nearest guard station “to provide some information”. It was quite clear to me what that meant, not only because the May/June arrests, which had begun in exactly the same way, were still a terrible memory fresh in our minds, but also because the days shortly before the 10th November had been tense with fear and expectation as we waited to see how the government would react to the incident in Paris. Moreover, the artificially whipped-up and incited “voice of the people" did not bode well. I had to wait for a long time at the guard station, sitting alongside others who had also been taken, and we were taken under escort to the appropriate Kommissariat.
A few hundred people were already gathered there in the courtyard of the building – it was around 11 o’clock in the morning – and here we were allowed to see our relatives for the last time, because I must stress that the Vienna police turned out to be exceptionally accommodating to the point, even, of disapproving of the whole Aktion, something that would have a significant impact later on. So we received the odd affectionate gift from our relatives and were able to pass on important information to them.
For we had shared all our different experiences amongst one another: how one person had been taken from his place of work, another from his home, and a third from his office, or even from a train waiting to leave for a journey abroad, and how in the house-to-house searches, supposedly meant to uncover hidden weapons, everything of value that could be found, including jewellery, money, silver cutlery, cameras, typewriters etc. had been confiscated. So in this regard we were able to warn the women, if it was not already too late. It was to be the last conversation for a long time.
New prisoners kept arriving at the Kommissariat all the time. The stream was continuous until around 4 o’clock in the afternoon and only then came to an end, which led us to assume, rightly as it later transpired, that the Aktion had come to an end. In fact anyone who had not been admitted by this point or was captured later was freed shortly afterwards. We on the other hand stood around in the courtyard of the Kommissariat waiting to see what would happen. It was already 11 o’clock in the evening, by which time we had been standing there for 12 hours, before a group of us was taken in for questioning, then all of a sudden at midnight SS-Verfügungstruppe (in grey military uniform with steel helmets) entered the building. We heard a series of brief commands and they prepared us to be taken away.
We were formed into separate units facing the wall, not without some blows and screaming, and driven away in buses. Climbing aboard the buses gave these fellows their first opportunity for a bit of fun – if they thought things were going too slowly they lashed out with crops and belts. Unfortunately it was the old and the sick who came off worst, just as they were also to become the main object of the sadistic excesses that were to follow.
Our journey took us to the IX. Wiener Gemeindebezirk, we thought our destination would be the central Vienna police prison on the Elisabethpromenade but instead we continued to the Pramergasse, also in district IX, to the police riding school. On leaving the bus we became victims once again of the same sweet little game that was played when we boarded; we entered an enormous complex of buildings and became aware of large groups of Jews from other districts of Vienna already lined up in formations. We had never seen such a large number of Jews in one place. We reckoned there must have been around 4,000 men, and then there were as many again on the aforementioned Elisabethpromenade, in the Sofiensäle (a huge Viennese entertainment establishment), even more in the Karajangasse (a Notarrest set up in a school in the Wiener Gemeindebezirk XX), along with those from neighbouring provinces (Baden, Mödling etc.) sent to Vienna and held in the former district court in district VII. All in all a gigantic number.
We were also lined up in military file and stood there under guard for half the night to Friday 11th November and then all of Friday without being allowed to move a single step out of line, let alone being given a bite to eat. Towards evening the severe formations were relaxed, we were allowed to go to the toilet, could each buy a single bread roll from a baker who appeared, and were allowed to sleep on the ground. When you bear in mind that the Semmel was made of ground bark mixed with horse muck and similar ingredients, and that we still threw ourselves to the ground in unison as if following a command, just to get a bit of rest, then you can judge for yourself how exhausted everyone was, having already been on their feet for 36 hours.
Of course there was rumour upon rumour. Whilst someone claimed to have got “authentic information” from one guard, someone else had it from another – the first claimed we would be home within two days, the other already mentioned Dachau for the first time, but we could not believe that, we were innocent after all, we took him to be a pessimist. But how right they were, those who prophesied the worst.
As far as food was concerned nothing appeared – apart from that single Semmel – until the morning of Saturday the 12th November; this encouraged the optimists to be hopeful, since 48 hours had, of course, elapsed since our committal. Finally there was some movement in the crowd, we saw bread being distributed, but far too little for the mass of people there, which led to a crush of the kind you see at the feeding of a beast of prey’s cage. Subsequently it transpired that the Vienna Wache had decided on its own that it could not face watching this inhumanity any longer and had handed over some of its own rations. Later, at the instigation of the Vienna Israelitische Kultusgemeinde, more bread was distributed, this time also to those who had not received any the first time.
One can hardly imagine the mood of the crowd, exhausted, hungry, fearing the very worst, it is a miracle that people for the most part remained calm, although outbursts of hysteria and epileptic fits were the order of the day, leading one to believe that an outbreak of mass hysteria was imminent. This situation finally came to an end on Saturday towards the evening when they began to take us away.
We were piled into open military vehicles, each with two SS men sitting at one end with fixed bayonets, and it was made abundantly clear to us that an attempt to escape would be punished by being shot. The route went along the Ringstraβe and Burgstraβe into the Kenyongasse in district VII where we were delivered to a former convent school.
On getting down, screams, blows, lined up in the corridor facing the wall, then ordered to the fourth floor, a small room, undoubtedly former sleeping quarters of a holy sister, now completely bare. Aside from a single hysterical outburst by one colleague the night passed peacefully, on the hard floor of course.
Next day, Sunday the 13th November, there were a number of inspections and it looked as though the gentlemen concerned still had no idea what to commence with us. We had a premonition when we caught sight of people who had been dealt with by the SA at the Kommissariat Vienna district II, in the Ausstellungsstraβe (which according to information from different sources was the worst place people were sent to in Vienna on the 10th November, O.H.); terrible evidence of how they had been “dealt with” included bleeding heads, emergency bandages, black eyes etc.
Sudden visit in the night to Monday the 14th November, everyone jumps up half asleep, the room commander announces “43 men”, receives a blow to the face of such force that he reels, he should have announced “43 Jews!” And now the order “Wippen!” begins. That went on for an hour. Anyone who did not do it exactly right was ordered out into the corridor and returned bleeding and covered with weals from the whip. Always accompanied by terrible screaming, we heard everything from the neighbouring rooms and it was much worse to have to listen to the screams of those being tortured than experiencing it oneself.
We were fortunate that in our narrow room there was not much opportunity for things to get out of hand, but next door there were larger classrooms and there sparks really flew. In one room in particular there was a rabbi in a caftan who seemed to attract the attention of these beasts more than anyone else. They beat him up completely, broke his teeth and both cheek bones, and fractured the base of his skull, the latter with their steel helmets and nothing was worse than having to listen to the noise they made and the wailing that accompanied it followed by a groaning. When we later caught sight of him in a spare moment his face was so swollen that we could barely identify any human features at all in the physical wreck that remained.
Insofar as an escalation was possible, then this disastrous room was also home to an even more unfortunate resident, a young man, something of a dreamer, who suddenly had the idea of going over to the teacher’s desk and writing a poem of supplication on the blackboard, in which he proposed a reconciliation between the Jews and the NSDAP. This madman was caught in the act during an inspection and had his idea literally knocked on its head with such force he ended up dead on the floor.
Other deaths followed his, and from talking to others it was later possible to say with certainty that 20 dead would be no exaggeration, not least given that a number of people who committed suicide to put an end to their suffering had to be added to the list.
And Wippen over and over again. Anyone who could not keep going had a bucket of water poured over them and then it started again. In the short breaks we were allowed, during which we lay on the floor covered in sweat and with hearts thumping, the windows were thrown open in order to finish us off as quickly as possible.
Suddenly in the night the guard appeared and told the room commander that the guards wanted to have a good day and that all money should be handed over. If anyone was found to have any money left they would be shot. After what had happened we were in no doubt that they would be true to their word and handed over all our money, there were RM. 540.- in the room, so that we did not have a penny in Dachau.
Just like the night to Monday the 14th, the Monday proceeded with Wippen and torture. All the time terrible screams in the building, brutal blows, blood flowing, was this still human beings?
Finally, on Tuesday the 15th November it all seemed to come to an end and we were prepared for departure and had to pass through a hall with about 50 young officials seated at tables who interrogated us and had us sign a piece of paper that stated we were in effect willing to hand over all our possessions. Starving, 48 hours without a moment’s quiet, the racket in the hall with the clattering of 50 typewriters, I had no idea what I was being asked and what I signed, it was a cunningly devised system to extort “confessions” and concessions.
We were then immediately put into police vehicles (known in Vienna as “Grüner Heinrich”) and were taken to the Elisabethpromenade. Once again the optimists thought this was the end of our misery – how wrong.
We certainly received our first warm meal – soup and then beans and bread – sleeping standing up in the corridors because even in a building as substantial as this one there was no space to accommodate so many people in the cells, and then all of a sudden the SS beasts, whom we thought we had seen the last of, arrived on the scene and we knew that our ordeal would continue. We were again brought before a inspector who had the details of our interrogation in the Kenyongasse in front of him and decided as he saw fit who should go to Dachau and who should go home.
In the meantime the inhuman treatment by the SS continued there too, you could hear the terrible sound of belt blows and the wailing of the victims coming from a special room.
I was selected for Dachau and arrived with my comrades at the Westbahnhof in a “Grüner Heinrich” on the 16th November at around 2 o’clock in the morning, where we had to run the SS gauntlet and were beaten again before being herded into cattle trucks. Here we spent the 16-hour journey, 70 men with nothing to eat or drink, not able to relieve ourselves, and arrived half suffocated in Dachau, and were luckier than those who had travelled under escort in passenger trains and who had been forced to stare into the light for the whole journey and subjected to inhuman beatings throughout. Many of them lost their sanity, jumped out of the windows and were “auf der Flucht erschossen”.
Although it sounds absurd, for us inmates from Kenyongasse, Dachau (see attached sketch [missing]) was almost a relief after so many inhuman and unpredictable outrages. Because there were drills all the time and everything was organised according to a strict, pre-ordained set of rules. We were woken at 5 o’clock in the morning, by half past 5 everyone had to have washed, gone to the toilet and be lined up in formation ready for breakfast, and during this half hour a group, which changed weekly, also had to be responsible for tidying and washing the rooms, the bathrooms, the toilets and the passages.
After breakfast, consisting of a black drink which had nothing to do with coffee but at least was warm, we lined up in formations once again and the whole camp, Jews and Aryans, marched to the Appellplatz for the so-called Zählappell which happened twice a day, morning and evening, and during which possible disappearances could be ascertained instantly. We arrived at the Appellplatz by a quarter to 8 in the morning and had to stand to attention for an hour until the reporting officer had informed the Lagerkommandant of the current state of the camp and then, following the command “move out!", we marched back in formation to our workplaces.
For us Aktionsjuden work consisted of “Exerzieren” and exercises until 12 o’clock, followed by lunch, consisting of vegetables with microscopic quantities of tinned meat, or rice with milk, or sago with milk, and a bread ration of a quarter of a loaf of Kommisssbrot per man per day which one had to divide up for oneself accordingly.
At 1 o’clock the lunch break was over and we marched, again in formation, to the Appellplatz to be allocated into work groups, whereby the Aryans were selected for work outside the camp under special guard. Following the allocation we Jews marched back to our barracks and carried out our “work”, namely marching and exercises.
That continued until around 5 o’clock in the afternoon, at which time we had to present ourselves for the evening Appell on the Appellplatz. By their very nature these Appell were the most unpleasant institution in the concentration camp. On arrival in Dachau we mostly had to hand over our clothes and shoes and in return were allocated army shoes, socks and a uniform made of cotton drill that was basically nothing more than a pair of pyjamas. We were also shorn, so when the rain and snow ran down our heads and shoulders during an Appell roll call that had already lasted an hour and showed no sign of ending, and in bad weather we were obviously kept standing longer than when it was good, most of us reckoned we would not be able to survive this treatment for very long. Later, when the big frost set in before Christmas and the icy winds on the open Appellplatz blew right through you until you felt numbed to the bone, and then crawled away bent double with agonising pains all over, it looked like something out of Dante’s Inferno.
One was happy to get back to one’s bed – we slept on open straw covered with a flannel blanket – quickly ate supper, soup or sausage or cheese and lime blossom tea, washed out the bowl and lay down.
During this frost period the first consequences of the pitiless standing around in the open for hours began to be visible: everyone had hands and feet swollen from the frost; in many cases these blisters had burst and were the beginning of the end because they always got infected. In Dachau there were in fact two barracks for hospital treatment. But they were only for those with infectious diseases or a temperature of over 40 degrees; with frostbite you only received out-patient treatment, by Aryan prisoners with nursing skills, and only between 3 and half past 4 o’clock in the afternoon.
When one considers that as the cold got worse 200 to 300 people sought treatment every day, and could only be treated during this short period by four medical orderlies, then one understands why no more than one in ten went there and the frostbite steadily got worse. In the end the medical orderlies had no choice but to risk serious punishment by stealing the bandages and ointments and selling them to the Jews for a few Marks so that the doctors who were imprisoned with the others in the barracks could continue the treatment. Unfortunately they were frequently caught in the act during inspections and received severe blows.
When this treatment was no longer sufficient and people began to die from the cold it apparently even became too much for the camp authorities, and in the final days before Christmas our work, i.e. spending time in the open air, was restricted to the morning and evening Zählappell, and the rest of the day was spent inside, where at least there was some heating.
By Christmas we had already been there for five weeks, we had had one bath on arrival, the straw had never been replaced and it comes as no surprise that lice started to appear in some of the blocks. As a punishment the occupants of these blocks had to undress completely on the Appellplatz and finally got to have a shower, fresh underwear and clothes, and their straw bedding was replaced. One block (barrack) had a bit of good luck amidst all the misfortune because it suffered a case of typhus, which put the entire block into quarantine for three weeks at a time of the bitterest cold (-15°) and meant we could not go out at all.
I can honestly say that it was a bitter period, there was not a single day when one did not feel one’s life was in danger, and I was happy beyond measure when early in the morning on the day before Christmas my name was called out in the list of those to be released. It did not matter that we got nothing to eat that day from 6 o’clock in the morning until 7 o’clock at night, we were going to be free at last, and the heavy gates shut behind us once and for all after 60 terrible, painful days.
