Dan Snow's History Hit - The Boy Who Followed His Father Into Auschwitz

Episode Date: February 17, 2020

This is the most remarkable father and son story I have ever come across.We are still marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz here at History Hit and this time I am talking to historian Jeremy Dronfield about an astonishing true story of horror, love and impossible survival. In 1939, Gustav Kleinmann, a Jewish upholsterer in Vienna, was arrested by the Nazis. Along with his sixteen-year-old son Fritz, he was sent to Buchenwald in Germany, where a new concentration camp was being built.They helped build Buchenwald, young Fritz learning construction skills which would help preserve him from extermination in the coming years. But it was his bond with his father that would ultimately keep them both alive. When the fifty-year-old Gustav was transferred to Auschwitz--a certain death sentence--Fritz was determined to go with him. His wiser friends tried to dissuade him--"If you want to keep living, you have to forget your father," one said. Instead Fritz pleaded for a place on the Auschwitz transport. "He is a true comrade," Gustav wrote in his secret diary, "always at my side. The boy is my greatest joy. We are inseparable."Gustav kept his diary hidden throughout his six years in the death camps--even Fritz knew nothing of it.We talked about this very rare diary, Fritz's own accounts, and other eyewitness testimony, and built a picture of this extraordinary father and son team.

Hi everybody, welcome, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. We in the UK have been pummeled by a great storm, well in fact two great storms in the last week, one of the biggest Atlantic storms that's ever hit these shores. It's had me thinking I must do a podcast about the great storm of the early 18th century. I think it was the autumn of 1703 and the wind blew so hard it knocked over thousands of oak trees in the New Forest, prime trees for building naval ships, scattered English fleet in the Channel, sinking naval ships, ripped the roofs off many churches. It was a heck of a storm. It was a heck of a storm. It blew, apparently, because God was angry at the English. Well, we don't know if the great deity is angry at the Brits at the moment.

Wouldn't blame him or her if they were. Actually, I just remember the Eddiston Lighthouse blew awake. Imagine how miserable that must have been. People huddled on that lighthouse. It was built on the Eddiston Rock. And it was just entire things swept away. No trace of them or the lighthouse left behind. I always thought that was haunting. That must have been a grim night. Anyway, if you're holed up by the storm, please listen to this new podcast. It is an absolutely extraordinary story. It is the greatest father and son story that I have ever come across in my life. I talked to historian Jeremy Drondfield. He wrote this tale of Gustav Kleinman, who was a Jewish upholsterer in Vienna, and his 16-year-old son Fritz. They have, for several reasons, a unique experience during the horror that was the Holocaust.

It's the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. We've got lots of Holocaust material on the podcast, on the TV channel at the moment. I hope you've been watching and listening to it and this is another addition to that season it is a simply extraordinary story that involves an almost unique diary kept by gustav kleinman during the course of the holocaust never discovered by his guards and also the bond of a father and a son that will bring a tear to all those of you who've loved and been close to a parent or a child. You can go onto History Hit TV, our new sister digital history channel. It works like Netflix.

For a small subscription, you get access to the world's best history channel. And if you use the code POD6, P-O-D-6, you will actually not pay anything for the first six weeks. You can go and check it out. Have a little tootle around and know if you don't like it, don't subscribe. But please go and check it out. Have a little tootle around in there. If you don't like it, don't subscribe. But please go and check it out. Get your six weeks free. So go to historyhit.tv and use the code POD6.

You can watch me mudlarking. I'm the newest mudlarker in town. I went down to the banks of the Thames. We found some extraordinary things. We found an 18th century coin. In fact, two 18th century coins. We found Roman glass. We found pottery.

We found blackened roof tiles. Probably, possibly, from the Great Fire of London. It was absolutely brilliant. So if you want to go and check out that mud-larking documentary, it is now up on there. So please go to history.tv, use the code POD6. In the meantime, enjoy Jeremy Dromfield talking about the father and son team

and their journey through the Holocaust. I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished and liquidated. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world. Jeremy, thank you very much for coming on. It's great to be here. What a story.

There is no end, is there? I mean, each of these personal experiences of these millions of people caught up, each one of them has all the drama and tragedy and intensity. I mean, it's just extraordinary, isn't it? Tell us about your story. the right word I'm looking for, intensity. I mean, it's just extraordinary, isn't it? Tell us about your story. Well, I first came across this story when I'd learned of the existence of the secret concentration camp diary of Gustav Kleinmann. Now, Gustav was a middle-aged Jewish upholsterer from Vienna, not very well off. He had a wife and four children, struggled to live.

He had a wife and four children, struggled to live. In 1939, September 1939, he and his teenage son, Fritz, were both sent to Buchenwald concentration camp, along with over a thousand other Jewish men and boys. Now, for them, that was the beginning of an absolutely incredible odyssey of survival. They were in the concentration camps for over five years together, from Buchenwald to Auschwitz. The most powerful moment of their story, for me, is the single choice that gives my book its title. In 1942, the Nazis decided that in order to create a completely Jew-free Reich, they wanted to get rid of all the Jews who were in concentration camps on German soil and transfer them to the relatively new camps in occupied Poland,

in occupied Poland, Auschwitz and Majdanek. And by that point, there were only about 600 or so Jewish men left in Buchenwald. There had been thousands sent there. Most of them had died from abuse, starvation, disease and random murders. Now, Gustav Kleinmann was among 400 who were slated for transfer to Auschwitz. Now, they knew perfectly well that that was a virtual death sentence. His son Fritz was lucky enough not to be included on the list because he had acquired building skills and was one of a number of prisoners who were needed

for the construction of an armaments factory attached to the camp. But as soon as he heard that his father was being transferred to Auschwitz, Fritz wanted to go with him. And he talked to his friends about this and asked if he would be able to go with him. And his friends pleaded with him not to go. They said, if you want to go on living, you have to forget your father. But for it's, that was impossible for him. And he went to the SS. And he asked to be allowed to go on the transport, and they allowed him. And in October 1942, a transport of 400 Jewish men went to Auschwitz. There was a selection when they arrived.

Immediately on the platform? Not on the platform, but a few days later. And Gustav, by this point, was well over 50 years old. It was virtually unheard of for a person that age to be passed as fit enough, especially after three years in a concentration camp. But he passed selection and was selected for labour, and so was Fritz. Hundreds of other men from other transports went to the gas chambers. And that was the beginning of another dreadful episode

when another two years in Auschwitz they managed to survive. I should ask, because you mentioned the secret diary at the start. Is it almost unique? Tell me about the diary. There are very few surviving diaries from the concentration camps. Gustav began his on the 2nd of October 1939, the day he arrived in Buchenwald. And he wrote the last entry in it in the summer of 1945, when he was making his way back across Germany to Vienna. How on earth did he manage to keep it secret?

Even Fritz didn't know about the diary until after the war. know about the diary until after the war. And I was actually quite angry with his father, because he had been not only endangering himself, but the people who were close to him. It's a tiny book, just a little pocket notebook. It's very sketchily written, most of it. And even Fritz, I think, never quite knew how his father kept it hidden. Almost certainly it would have been in his clothing. He was an upholsterer. He was skilled at sewing. He probably made a secret pocket. And there was one period when he was working in a bunk room in Buchenwald

where he kept it hidden in the furniture. Most of the time he probably carried it with him. He was virtually certain that he was going to lose it when they were transferred to Auschwitz. Their uniforms were taken away from them and fumigated, but they got the same uniforms back, and the diary was still there. Oh, wow. And they had been searched for valuables,

but I think probably the SS figured that, as these were prisoners coming from Buchenwald, they weren't really worth searching very thoroughly. They were highly unlikely to have any valuables on them. And as I say, it was preserved. And Gustav, I don't think, he didn't like to talk about his experiences in the camp, which is probably why Fritz never quite knew how he kept it hidden. And it was evidently a sore subject.

So when you're building this story, you've got the diary. What other sources do we have? Do we have post-war interviews as well? Yes. The diary is really only a starting point. Because Gustav wrote it so extremely sketchily, most of it, it's full of really obscure references to people and events and places and the way the camps were run.

And even a specialist Holocaust historian would have to consult their reference books to understand large parts of it. So that was not only the start of the story for me, but also the start of the research. A lot of, most of my early research was devoted to deciphering a lot of what Gustav was talking about. And that involved tracking down other eyewitness testimony, a lot of which is in books in the Auschwitz trials, the transcripts of that from the early 60s. And also Fritz left some records. He left a short memoir he wrote in the 1990s

and from the late 70s on he left a number of recorded interviews. The last one he gave was in 2007. It was just a couple of years before he died and on top of that I managed to track down the last surviving member of the Holocaust-era family, Kurt Kleiman, Fritz's little brother, who his mother managed to get him out of Austria in 1941 when he was 11 years old and he went to America and is still alive and well, living in New Jersey. And through a long series of connections, I finally managed to track him down and spent many, many hours interviewing him about the family, their family life, life under the Nazis in Vienna,

what it was like to be a refugee, what kind of people his father and brother were. Because that decision by Fritz to follow his father to Auschwitz was really extraordinary. I mean, people wouldn't necessarily make that decision. And I felt to understand that, you had to understand the family. And from what Kurt told me and from a tiny number of surviving letters, revealed a really close, loving, warm family. We're devoted to each other. And once you understand that, you understand why Fritz couldn't stand to be parted from his father.

What did Gustav say in his diary about Fritz's decision? Did he try and dissuade him? No. That seems remarkable, that Gustav wouldn't try to dissuade his father, but at least as far as he didn't say anything to that effect in his diary. But he simply comments after they had arrived, the boy is my greatest joy. He came with me willingly.

He was immensely proud of Fritz. Fritz's abilities, his skills, his courage and his devotion. So their experience in their first concentration camp, it was sort of like a work camp. The conditions, I imagine, were pretty bad. Well, when they first arrived in Buchenwald, a large part of the camp was still under construction. Buchenwald was, like Dachau, was a major SS complex. And there were large-scale SS barracks being still under construction when large batches of prisoners were arriving in 1938 and 1939.

And most of their labour was geared towards that, and the centre of it all was the stone quarry. Buchenwald is on top of a hill called the Ettersberg, a forested hill. So a lot of the work was geared around quarrying stone, cutting trees and construction. Within a few days of arriving, Gustav and Fritz were both put into the stone quarry to work and it was a killing ground. Prisoners were killed through overwork, through beatings, through accidents and through random shootings. It was a favourite game of the SS to force prisoners to run through the sentry line and as soon as you did that, you immediately shot.

They do things like snatching a cap off a prisoner's head and tossing it across the sentry line, ordering him to go and get it. And he would be shot. And Fritz and Gustav were put, this is an example of where the diary is confusing because Gustav refers to him and Fritz being given positions as uh lorifer is the word he uses which is literally translates as truck drivers and it took quite a bit of digging to find out that this meant the teams of men who were tasked with towing these huge railway trucks up the hill, filled with about four tonnes of stone each. It would be teams of about 16 to 26 men to each cart would have to push and drag these things up an extremely steep hill in icy conditions on loose stones in ill-fitting, poor quality shoes. They had to do so many in a single day that they would race them down the hill, let them free wheel down the hill. They would often jump the tracks, crash into oncoming

trucks. And once you had sustained any kind of serious injury in Buchenwald, you were as good as dead because there was no real medical treatment. Eventually Fritz was transferred to the construction detail and there he was lucky enough to come into contact with a prisoner called Robert Sievert. Now when the first intakes of Jewish prisoners arrived in the late 30s, they found that there was already a camp population of political prisoners, all old socialists and communists who'd been there since the beginning. And they had formed a kind of resistance network that was mainly geared towards providing support for prisoners, you know, wangling extra food, finding out intelligence information, dodging punishments, things like that.

Now, Robert Sievert was one of these old communists and was a builder by trade. And after discussions with Fritz and encouraged by Fritz's attitude and his initiative, Robert Sievert managed to persuade the SS to let him found a bricklaying school for young Jewish boys. And so Fritz acquired these building skills, which were a really key part of keeping him alive through several years in the camps. He had these very unusual skills, and the Nazis always needed construction work doing. and the Nazis always needed construction work doing. Auschwitz, in some ways, Auschwitz was less dangerous for Gustav and Fritz.

Again, they were put to construction work. Fritz was put to construction work, and Gustav bluffed his way as a builder initially. Again, they were building a camp. They were sent to the Auschwitz-Monowitz camp, which was attached to the huge IG Farben-Bunwerke factory complex. And as Fritz managed to survive as a builder initially, Gustav bluffed his way. And eventually, Gustav managed to get work as an upholsterer in the camps. He was working indoors. He had a relatively easier time.

But the really fundamentally important thing that helped Gustav survive was when he was redesignated as non-Jewish. In 1943, by 1943, a number of veteran Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz-Mornewitz had got into positions due to their skills as functionary prisoners. They were working in the camp office. They were a lot like Gustav. They were working in skilled trades where they had people under them. And there was a visit by SS top brass from Berlin who were appalled to discover that there were Jews in important positions. And they ordered the camp SS to do something about it.

Now, those men assumed that doing something about it would mean killing them. Now, if you got singled out for anything, if you were Jewish, it likely meant being sent to the gas chambers. I believe there were 17 of them, 16 or 17 of them were called out at roll call one day. And the yellow part of their badge was taken away. They were re-designated as Aryan political prisoners. And from that moment, Gustav Kleinman was officially an Aryan. And it's the whole towering lunacy of Nazi racial ideology

summed up in one self-satirising ceremony. From that point on, as far as the SS were concerned, Gustav and those other Jewish men were literally Aryan, which was great for the other prisoners because from that point on they had a good number of Jewish prisoners in positions where they could acquire intelligence, favours, extra rations, and they used that to help the other Jewish prisoners. And meanwhile Fritz was getting involved heavily with the resistance

and that put him in extreme danger and nearly cost him his life. A large part of the resistance, as I said, was geared towards supporting other prisoners. But also part of it was geared towards planning escapes and sabotage. And that's where Fritz started to get involved with. escapes and sabotage and that's where Fritz started to get involved with. And eventually he was caught and he was tortured by the camp Gestapo, by an officer called Maximilian Grabner, who was head of the Auschwitz camp Gestapo. Fritz was subjected to torture. He was bullwhipped. He was hung by his wrists, which left him with permanent injuries that he never recovered from.

And the only reason he survived was that it was a Saturday night and Graben was keen to get home for what was left of the weekend. So Fritz was sent back to the camp with the idea that his torture would continue on the Monday morning. It would have gone on until he was dead. But his friends in the camp resistance faked his death. They swapped his identity with another prisoner who had died of fever in the camp infirmary. And Fritz Kleinman was listed as having died. and Fritz Kleimann was listed as having died. Now, it was an extremely dangerous plan because, of course, he couldn't do anything about the tattooed number on his arm.

He just had to hope that no one would see it. But ultimately, he got away with it, partly because a few months later, Lieutenant Grabner was discovered to be up to his neck in corruption and the SS got rid of him. And so he burned most of his records. So Fritz gradually, over the next few months, went back to being Fritz Kleinman, and ultimately survived. But it didn't stop him being involved in the resistance. Eventually, he started smuggling weapons into Auschwitz through a German civilian worker he'd made friends with.

He had friends in, made contact with friends in Vienna who sent food parcels, which he shared with other prisoners. And he tried to pay forward the treatment he had had from that older generation of veteran prisoners in Bukhmut when he was a boy. He tried to pay that forward by finding other Jewish boys and giving them his extra rations. But it tormented him for the rest of his life that he couldn't help others. He had to pick which ones he would help

and watch others starve. And it was his involvement, that aspect of his involvement in the resistance and some of the morally questionable things he had to do, like in order to acquire weapons and extra food and these favours that he used to help other prisoners, he would have to do things like acquiring money that had been stolen from incoming prisoners,

from other members of the resistance who worked in the clothing stores. And he never really... I don't think he ever forgave himself for these failings, even though he was a man of an extraordinary courage and resource. He felt that he didn't do enough or that he did, he compromised himself morally.

And were they able to see each other every day, this father and son, even after the dad got the clerical work? Or not clerical, it became the apostle? It became a lot more difficult. They had to meet in secret. Because as far as the SS were concerned, Gustav was Aryan. Fritz was Jewish. So Fritz was actually beaten up by an SS guard

for talking to his father and for claiming that his father was his father and this guard wouldn't believe it how could an Aryan man have a Jewish son and because Fritz wouldn't just

be cowed by this he ended up getting actually quite badly beaten up. And Gustav had to stand by and watch this happen. And they just had to meet in secret. There was also a period after Fritz's death had been faked when Gustav wasn't let into the secret at first because it would endanger him. And he had to go on believing for at least weeks,

possibly months, that Fritz was dead. And eventually they were reunited. An incredibly painful time. And then they survived. They outlasted the Reich. They did survive. And again, this, this story just went on getting more, every time I talk about this publicly, this, this story, I mean, I preface my book with these words and I, every time I talk about it, I have to say, this is a true story. I partly that you, you wish that it was not a true story

I partly that you wish that it was not a true story because parts of it are so harrowing and horrible. But at the same time, it's difficult to believe that it's a true story because it's full of such courage to the point of heroism and incredible devotion. And it goes on and on. The story goes on and on, being incredible and difficult to believe. But every extraordinary incident I tracked down in documentary evidence and confirmed. So they survived to January 1945, and the Red Army were approaching Auschwitz. And this is the point at which Fritz decided to obtain weapons because a number of prisoners believed that when the Red Army were close, the SS would simply slaughter all the remaining prisoners. And Fritz and a number of other prisoners wanted to be able to fight back. And Fritz and a number of other prisoners wanted to be able to fight back.

He also obtained, again through the looted clothing store, civilian clothes, which he and his father took to wearing underneath their camp uniforms. They also avoided the weekly head shaving and grew their hair. And they only got away with this because it was winter and most of the roll calls were done in darkness. And their plan was, or Fritz's plan was, that once they were transported to another camp, they guessed that they would be evacuated and driven west. And as soon as they were on Austrian soil, they would escape and discard their uniforms and try to make their way back to Vienna.

So they were part of the death march west from Auschwitz. They were part of a batch that was put on trains and sent to Mauthausen or destined for Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. Still together at this point? Still together. And still with a tiny handful of that original batch of Jewish men who had come from Buchenwald, a small number of whom were still surviving.

Tiny number. And, as I said, the plan was that they would jump from the train and discard their uniforms, once they were back onto Austrian soil. plan was that they would jump from the train and discard their uniforms, as soon as they were back onto Austrian soil. The train passed through Vienna, passed within a few yards of where they had lived, and went on west towards Mauthausen, and Fritz decided now was the moment to get to jump. But Gustav by this point was too weak. The temperatures were sub-zero. The railway wagons they were in were open-topped. Absolutely

freezing winds. They had no food. They had to dangle tin cups over the side to pick up snow to obtain water. They were jammed into these wagons. They were dying at the rate of dozens a day. And they would stack the bodies up in the corner of the wagon, take the uniforms off them to keep themselves warm. And after several days of this, as they were crossing Austria, Gustav was just too weak to go. And again again Fritz was determined to stay with his father but this time his father said no you've got to go he believed he would die soon so Fritz jumped from the train took off his uniform and started heading for Vienna he managed to get on a train at a little village.

And with absolutely atrocious bad luck, it was a German troop train heading back from the front, full of German soldiers, and subjected to inspection by German military police. Fritz was hauled off the train and was taken and interrogated. He resisted questioning so doggedly that they actually started to believe... At no point did it occur to them that he was a Jewish escapee from a concentration camp. They thought, at first, he was a deserting German soldier. And secondly, when he resisted interrogation, they thought he was an SOE agent dropped by the British.

And they couldn't get anything out of him, so eventually he was sent to where he had originally been destined, Mauthausen concentration camp, as effectively a political or intelligence prisoner, an enemy intelligence agent. He was at least expecting that he'd be reunited with his father there and the other men that he had known in Auschwitz. But they weren't there.

The train had arrived at Mauthausen and been turned away because the camp was full. Gustav eventually ended up in Mittelbau Dora and then ultimately, in the last few days of the war, in Belsen and was liberated there by the British. Fritz was stuck in Mauthausen and he no longer had any friends, no support network, and he rapidly began starving to death. By the time the Americans liberated the camp in May, Fritz weighed five and a half stone and was a week, maybe most two weeks, away from death. American medical services saved his life,

and eventually he made his way back to Vienna, back to the very apartment building where the family had lived before the war. There was no sign of his father there. It would be months before Gustav finally arrived back in Vienna and they were reunited. in Vienna and they were reunited. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History,

we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History,

a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. What happened to the rest of the family? Well, the story of the Klein family, part of what fascinates me about them is that it's kind of a panorama of the whole Holocaust. They were a family of six, two of them, Gustav and Fritz, were sent to the camps and ultimately survived. Gustav's wife, Tini, tried desperately to get her children out of Nazi Austria and get them to America, but it was virtually impossible. Fritz's elder sister Edith managed to get to England and got a job in Leeds as a domestic servant in early 1939. She was grown up. That left Fritz, his little brother Kurt, and their sister Herta.

And Tini tried to get her children out. She jumped through every hoop. But it was virtually impossible. The channel for refugees getting out of Nazi Germany was pinched closed at both ends. All but closed, by the US State Department, by the British government, and by the Nazis themselves, who just subjected what would be Jewish refugees to such punitive taxes. It was just robbery. Only the richest could afford to pay these taxes. Others had to borrow money.

And Tinny managed to get sponsorship for her children from a rich American in Massachusetts, a judge called Samuel Barnett, but couldn't get travel permits from the American government, except for Kurt, who was just lucky enough to be part of a quota of young children. He was only 11 at the time. Fritz was stuck in the camps. There's an extremely poignant photograph of Fritz taken in Buchenwald. He was called out one day at roll call, force marched to the Camp Gestapo, was given this ill-fitting civilian suit to wear

to give the impression that they just lived ordinary lives in the camp and had his photo taken. And this was part, he had no idea what was going on, but it turned out this was part of his mother's attempts to get him released and allowed to go to America. But it failed. Kirk got out, as I say, in early 1941. But that left Tinny and her daughter Hurta. And in June 1942, they were part of a transport of Jews that were sent for so-called resettlement in the East.

Now, at first, they thought they were really going to be resettled. There were 900, about 900,000 Jewish, mostly women, old men and children, children as young as five. When they first arrived at the station in Vienna, they found very pleasant passenger carriages waiting for them. They thought maybe they really were going to be resettled. The train left Vienna, crossed Poland, and as it got into what is now Belarus, the train stopped. They were driven out of the coaches at gunpoint and herded into cattle wagons.

And they were taken to Minsk and they were left, hundreds, crammed into these cattle wagons for two whole days without food or water. two whole days without food or water. The reason being that local railway, German railway workers in Minsk had recently been granted the right not to have to work at weekends. So these people were just left there. Some died in the wagons. And then from that point on,

we don't know exactly what happened to Hertha and Tini, but we know generally what was done to Jews who arrived at Minsk. They were taken in trucks to Malitrostnets camp a few miles outside Minsk and were taken to a pine plantation outside the camp. And the majority were shot and dumped in a pit, and a small number were gassed in experimental gas vans. Nobody survived from the transport that Tinie and Herta were on. The only reason we know what was done at Mali Trostenetz is because of a tiny, tiny handful of people

who survived from other transports and from the reports of the very cursory reports by the SS officer in charge of the murders. The prisoners were shot in the back of the head. The SS chosen method of doing this was with a pistol shot to the back of the neck. The soldiers who did this, the SS personnel who did this, were mostly drunk. Even SS death squads struggled with what they were doing morally, and they were mostly drunk when they did their work.

This was by far the most painful thing to research and to write about in a very harrowing story. And especially because I knew that the members of the family now didn't know these details. Kurt knew, obviously, that his mother and sister had been murdered at Minsk, but knew nothing about the details. And I knew that when I sent him the first draft of the book, he would be finding this out for the first time. These absolutely horrifying details. Sending him that draft, I felt almost like I was sending him

a bomb. I felt terrible, a real moral dilemma whether I should tell him these things. And later he told me that he had been devastated and broken down when he read this. But at the same time, he was glad to know it. And about other details, the details of the things that his father and his brother had gone through, he was learning for the first time from this book. And as an author, I had never felt that weight of responsibility before. You're dealing with people who were there at the time

and you're being the first conduit of this terrible, terrible information. What about Fritz and Gustav after the war? Did they remain close? Oh, yes, for the rest of their lives, yes. They both lived long lives. Gustav managed to re-establish his upholstery business eventually. In Vienna? Yeah, in Vienna, in the same street.

They carried on living in the same street they had come from. Gustav remarried in 1948 to a woman called Olga Steiskal, who was one of the small handful of non-Jewish family friends who had actually stayed loyal through the Nazi occupation. Gustav and Fritz were actually betrayed to the Nazis by close friends who had identified them, two Nazis, as Jews. People that they called doofreinden, friends who were close enough to use the intimate form of

German U. And when Fritz and Gustav were back in Vienna, back in the same, living in the same street. Land a Viking longship on island shores. Scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan

in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week.

Gustav was actually willing to acknowledge the existence of these people still lived there these people had betrayed them and They couldn't understand why Fritz wouldn't speak to them and they complained to Gustav Said your your your your son won't speak to us Fritz was Fritz was just furious about this and He actually overheard people saying things like, I see the Jew Kleinman is back. And Fritz never, although Gustav was willing to re-assimilate himself back into society and to forget about the past,

to put the past behind him, Fritz never lost his anger about what had happened, never for the rest of his life. Shortly after returning to Vienna, he was actually involved in beating up a local man who had been a member of the SS, the Vienna SS. He was arrested for it, but Vienna was under Soviet occupation at the time, and the Soviets had absolutely no problem with summary justice for Nazis, so they let him go. no problem with summary justice for Nazis, so they let him go.

But anyway, there were a small group of non-Jewish family friends who had stayed loyal, and these were the people that Fritz threw his, the German civilian worker that he had made friends with in Auschwitz, in the factories. He had managed to make contact with these people, and Olga had been one of the ones who had sent food packages back which were then smuggled into Auschwitz and in 1948 the widowed Gustav married Olga

and they had a long and happy marriage Gustav re-established his they lived in an apartment next door but one to the apartment block they had lived in before. Gustav re-established his upholstery business in the same street and continued working into the 1960s, eventually retired. He died in 1976, aged 85, and Fritz died in 2009. He also lived to 85. Fritz died in 2009. He also lived to 85. Fritz's life was marred by what he had been through.

He had to take early retirement when he was in his 50s because of the torture he'd undergone in Auschwitz had left him with permanent back injuries. But in many ways, he had a happy life. He had struggles. And he and his first wife tried to settle in Israel shortly after the state was founded. But at that time, all young Israeli men were conscripted into the Israeli army. And Fritz was one of them. And after years in the camps, he just couldn't take... I mean, Israel was at war at the time, and Fritz couldn't take that.

He just served out his compulsory two years and went back to Vienna. His marriage broke up, and he eventually remarried and lived a good life. And the family remained close. Gustav and Fritz discussed bringing Kurt back from America after the war was over, but they decided he had no mother anymore, and he was doing well in America. By this point, Kurt was well on his way to being an all-American boy.

He'd become an Eagle Scout, been thoroughly assimilated into American society. He was already forgetting how to speak German. So they decided to leave him where he was. But in 1954, Kurt, by this point, had been drafted into the US Army, was stationed in Germany, and made his first visit back to Vienna, and was reunited for the first time with Fritz and his father. They struggled to communicate because Kurt couldn't speak German anymore. Gustav and Fritz didn't speak any English. But it was the start of an ongoing relationship.

There is now a large and flourishing Kleinman family in America. And ever since, all through these decades, they have remained close with the Austrian Kleinman family. They've done extremely well. Well, that was a remarkable story. Thank you very much for telling it. I'm sure it wasn't an easy book to write. No, it wasn't. Some parts of it wasn't an easy book to write. No, it wasn't. And some parts of it are still extremely difficult

to talk about. And as I said, that episode with Kurt's mother and sister still breaks me up whenever I talk about it. It was especially moving to write because Tinny wrote letters to Kurt after he had gone to America. Tinny wrote letters to Kurt after he had gone to America.

And those letters are so filled with love and longing and despair that Tinny couldn't get her other children out. And that part of the story comes in parallel with what happened to Tinny and Hertha. And the letters always close, you know, Hertha sends you a thousand kisses. It's desperately, desperately, desperately painful. And it still breaks me up. We weren't just referring to it now. Well, thank you very much for referring to it and so much else.

What's the book called? The book is called The Boy Who Followed His Father Into Auschwitz. Thank you very much. Good luck with it. Thank you. I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished and liquidated. One child, one teacher, one book, and one pen can change the world.

He tells us what is possible, not just in the pages of history books but in our own lives as well i have faith in you hi everyone it's me dan snow just a quick request it's so annoying and i hate it when other podcasts do this but now i'm doing it i hate myself please please go on to itunes wherever you get your podcasts and give us a five-star rating and a review it really helps basically boosts up the chart, which is good. And then more people listen, which is nice. So if you could do that, I'd be very grateful. I understand if you don't want to subscribe to my TV channel.

I understand if you don't want to buy my calendar. But this is free. Come on, do me a favour. Thanks. you