Fuchs, Emanuel, AHC 2060

EF: […] This is the friend that I went to visit. We hardly sat down, we were going to have some coffee, when a few SS men came in from both sides – it was a Durchhaus. They came in and they took us in a truck and took us into the Kenyongasse, which was a holding place for…because they arrested so many people, they were not prepared to put them up. So, they…and that place was the beginning of a…where you really could foresee…if you had enough foresight, you could predict what this regime was going to come to, because the brutality that was committed in that place was just incredible. It is indescribable. So much so that a week after that, we were sent to a place, to the Pramergasse, which was a place where they sorted out people to go to Dachau and not…I don’t know what the criteria was, but I was sent to Dachau. When I came to Dachau…compared to the Kenyongasse, Dachau was a…ein Erholungsheim. I mean it was…the Kenyongasse: During the day we were in the room and we had to exercise up and down…knee bends. And then we had to go down on the floor. There were 200 in each classroom. And this is one thing that I hold against the Austrian police: The situation was that the police…Austrian police was on duty during the day in the Kenyongasse. That was the order of the way they were proceeding. And at night, at, I believe, six, seven, eight o’clock in the evening, the SS…German SS came on. During the day we had, in uniform, Austrian policemen guarding us. And I must in all fairness admit, they were not as brutal as the German SS, but even during the day we went through…to give you an example: Since I was the youngest in my class, in my group, meiner Stube--

AB: --you were twenty, right?

EF: I was twenty. I was the youngest. I was a skinny, young twenty-year-old. They came and they needed people to bring typewriters from trucks, because they had to register everybody. Everything was by the book, everything was by system and everybody had to be registered by typewriter. They had tables outside in the halls. There were people sitting with tables and keeping…filling out forms on typewriters. So, they delivered a lot of typewriters. So, they picked me and a few others. And I went down…I was chased down – everything was running…run, run, run – and I ran down and I picked up a typewriter at a time, I couldn’t carry more than that. I brought it up. When I came back into the classroom, where I came from…after bringing up a few typewriters, I was finished and I was headed back into my classroom. There was a podium where…you know the Viennese classes…there is a podium and then there were the seats for the students. And I was told to get up on the podium. There was a couple of others up on the podium and we had to do exercises. What do you call it? On the elbow…laying down, up and down on the elbows--

AB: --Liegestütze?

EF: No, like this…up and down on the elbows.

1/00:15:13

AB: I think it is push-ups.

EF: Push-ups, yes…push-ups, exactly. We had to do push-ups. All of a sudden – I was lying on the floor doing push-ups – I saw boots coming. And the guy came over to me and kicked me and said, “Up! Steh auf!” – I got up and he pulled out…he was a Schupo [Schutzpolizist], he pulled out his gun and looked me straight in the eye and he said, “How old are you?” I said, “Twenty.” He said, “How many…gentile girls have you,” he used different words, I don’t want to say it…“have you…haben Sie verführt? Hast du verführt?” I said, “None.” So, he looked me straight in the eye and then he took his gun, a big Luger – you know what they looked like…big – and he hit me on the side and then he said, “Weitermachen!” And I laid down on the floor and I continued. I was left alone then. And…they committed cruelties that were incredible: They had a man with a beard, for instance, a Jewish man with a beard on that podium and they asked two of…zwei andere Häftlinge to come up and light matches…had him sing Jewish songs, Jewish chants and they burnt his beard from both sides with matches. It may sound…sitting in these circumstances, may not be realistically understood what the meaning of that is when you see it. It is today…which is what? 60 years later, it is still inconceivable to me. The fact is, that I saw this man in Dachau. He survived. His face was totally…what do you call it? Pock…

AB: Brandblasen.

EF: Yes, from where the beard was…where they burnt it. But I could not believe that he survived. I said to him, “You survived? I don’t believe that, I was in your Stube.” The same…“Yes,” he said, “yes, I live.” – In any case…at night we were taken down to the gym in that school. I am returning to the Kenyongasse. The Kenyongasse to the…when it got dark – I don’t recall when the SS came on – they took us down into the gym and we had to make exercises in the gym. And they beat us with…you know in the gym how you have sticks to exercise these poles? They went around with those poles and just beat you around the feet, around the legs, around the back. And they made for instance…they picked out…in meiner Stube war ein…lawyer…an attorney, he was well known. His name was Engisch. I do not recall his first name. Engisch…and he was conspicuous because he was very heavy. He weighed maybe 300 pounds…he was a very heavy man, but he was a relatively young man. I would imagine he must have been in his 40’s. And he was a well-known lawyer in Vienna. And because of that…because he was a lawyer, they made him climb up…because he was heavy. I guess it gave them extra pleasure to make him climb up. You know, in the gymnasium they have ladders…vertical ladders. They made him climb up as far as he could and then hang on the…with two hands. And then they beat him until he fell down.

They made us fight each other until one…they paired us up and we had to fight each other until one was bloody and fell down. They stood by, the SS – they had a number of them in the gymnasium – and we had to fight and hit each other until one of us was bloody and fell down. Well, this was every night for about six nights, I believe. The last night, I will never forget it: When we were then told to go upstairs…in the corner in the gymnasium were maybe hundreds of coats. – Remember, we wore street clothes because we were the way we were arrested. – Coats and hats lying there, in the corner pushed off people who did not survive and were taken away. […]

EF: [...] Well, I had heard about it but I had no idea what to expect. I had no idea at all. And you know as a young person, you have a certain…at least I have a certain amount of optimism always. And that probably helped me survive. I said to myself, “Well, at least I will be able to see what Dachau looks like. After what I had gone through in the Kenyongasse, nothing could hurt me anymore.” And we arrived in Dachau. It was in the middle of the night. I still remember it was foggy, cold…this was in November, a week after the 10^th…around the 17^th of November. And it was cold already. – In Bavaria at that time of the year it gets very cold and Dachau is up in the mountains, pretty high. Munich is high and Dachau is higher yet. It is only a few miles outside of Munich. – And I came out…we were driven out from the train and had to line up outside in the middle. And we were told, “You are now in Dachau and from here there is no out. You are here…if you get sick, you go to the Revier, you go to the hospital, but don’t you ever try to get out! Don’t you go near the Stacheldraht because…it is law that will…it is electrically charged. And you will be assigned a room and you will find out what is happening as you go along”. That was about three, four in the morning, I was assigned to…Block four, Stube vier. It was enlarged tremendously by then, because they had to make more room for a lot more. This was not meant for so many prisoners, so they had by then enlarged…they had fresh…new wooden barracks put up and we set straw and double…Decke…benches…beds--

AB: --Stockbetten--

1/00:25:49

EF: Yes, and I had a lower one. And I went to sleep – I was young enough, I could sleep…I slept. The next morning, we were taken to get showered, get pictures taken, and…when we had the pictures taken, this was the most incredible thing of…sadism: What people had in…to think about…that they put in the chair, where you sat…when they took your picture, a needle popped out inside and stuck you in the behind. Could you believe this? I could not believe it. I mean, this is a state institution. Anyway, we were showered and then brought out from the shower into maybe…I don’t know what it is here today…by twenty degrees below freezing, we had to stand out all day. My hands…when I was finished, after Dachau…I forgot to mention, what will become very significant later…I omit it…I forgot to mention: The November…the Kristallnacht was on a Thursday to Friday. On the Sunday before, my friend and I – because it was important for every Jew in Austria to show his intention at that time to emigrate…to leave the country – I had a passport. Every Jew…as soon as Hitlercame to Austria we got to know that you better look to it, that you get a passport to get out. So, I had gotten my passport, but I had no place to go. No country would take us legally. There was no way you could get a visa anywhere. I had papers to come to America, but there was a bureaucratic procedure that may take…god knows how long. I had nothing to really show in the passport. And when you went on the street, you were stopped. I looked Jewish and I was stopped and they looked in the passport and if you could not show that you had intention to go some place, then you may be in trouble. So, I went ahead, my sister…I had a sister in Switzerland…that went illegally over the border to Switzerland – in the beginning, it was still possible to go, so she went and lived in Basel. – From Basel, Switzerland she wrote to me, that for 100 Schilling she can buy a visa, which was not legitimate to go to Paraguay, but it would be a stamp in the passport. If I wanted it I could get it, I just had to send the passport. “Well,” I said, “I have nothing to lose.” So, my friend and I both went to the main post office – I will never forget it. I think it wasWienzeile where the main…im zweiten Bezirk…the main post office. I don’t recall the address, but I remember going there on Sunday and putting the passports in the mail to my sister. That was Sunday, and the following Thursday, when everybody that was arrested had their passport in their pocket, because you made sure all the time to have your passport, I didn’t have mine. The ones that had it, they took them away from them, when they were taken in. Mine…they couldn’t take it away, I didn’t have it, it was in Switzerland. And I had forgotten about it. So, now I am returning to when I…normal days in Dachau were…in those years…that time when I was there…was marching around the block. And you never wanted to be caught at the end of a column. If you were at the end, the SS would always beat you up one way or another. So, you were always trying to go in the middle. I discovered that very early. And all we did from morning till night was marching around in snow and ice and cold, all around the blocks, just marching around. We didn’t work yet, nothing. In street clothes, just the clothes…we didn’t even have uniforms yet – they had nothing. They were overwhelmed by the number of people that they brought there.

1/00:30:29

So, I still wore my coat and my plain street shoes and my street clothes, and we kept walking, everybody…and we kept just marching in order, around the block day and night, day and night. We fell out in the morning – I don’t know…five, six o’clock in the morning – and we stood in front of the barracks and they came around an hour later with the coffee. You had a canteen, a metal cup, and they gave you a little coffee and you drank a little coffee and then you went to the Appellplatz. And you stood there…or you walked around and you walked around the block…just walking columns, walking day and night. As a matter of fact, that was very interesting: When I walked one time, all of a sudden people called my attention. There was the former Bürgermeister von Wien, [Richard] Schmitz. He was a prisoner. He was cleaning the street with a rake. He was there also that time. He had been taken as a prisoner. He was the last Bürgermeister before that time. And we…this went on for about six weeks. At the end of December…one day – I don’t remember when, I tried to reconstruct it but it is impossible – one day I was called. We were standing in front of the barracks, lining up for the coffee, when I was called up. “Fuchs!” By the…we had a Stubenälteste that was a…prisoner, and a Blockälteste. Those were our superiors, they were in charge. They were not Jewish but they were either…they were different categories, each had different…when they had uniforms, they had uniforms with triangular patches. They were either brown – then they were undesirable…socially undesirable –, purple – they were religiously undesirable –, red – they were socialist…and I think that was it. In any case, these two guys were red. They were socialists before.

This was the end of December. I think it was around the 25th or 26th of December when I was called out from the appeals, from the Appellplatz, by name and the Blockälteste said, “You are going home” – out of nowhere…to my complete surprise. I had no Idea. So, I said, “Really?” He said, “Yes.” And with that he hauled out and hit me in the face with the fist. I said, “Why did you do that?” – “What did I do? I show them.” He hit me on the other side. It was just an example of the brutality, which didn’t mean anything, it was just natural…fun. So, we were taken to the…again into the room where we were examined by a doctor. We had to sign that we were physically not abused and that everything…we were alright and that we had no problems. Somehow, we had to sign…at that time, the state was still interested in getting whitewashed. Apparently, this was for foreign politics. They went through the trouble of having us signed a certificate that we were not abused. Now you had very little choice – we signed. They said, “You are going to go home and when you come back to your home town you go to the Gestapo immediately, when you come home.” […]

AB: There is another thing, which would be interesting for me. Did you experience any kind of anti-Semitism before the Anschluss?

EF: Well, that is interesting that you ask me, because there was anti-Semitism – there is no question. And my feeling, if you ask me I would tell you as honestly…and nothing personal…I appreciate the effort you put in and anyone, who they have called afterwards a righteous gentile…you have heard of that?

AB: Yes.

EF: I appreciate that very much. And on a personal basis, as I said, my best friends were gentile boys, but when my name in Vienna…because my parents had just come from Poland when I was born, my first name was Mendel, M.E.N.D.E.L., which was a typical Jewish name in Vienna. – When I experienced Anti-Semitism, mostly before 1938, was when my name was read in class. There was an…undertone, you know, was Kichern heißt in German…they “hähä”. [Lacht hämisch.] But that was negligible because I had a lot more positives, I must say. I was accepted. It may be a very selfish point of view that I am expressing. Personally you ask me a question and to be perfectly frank, at that time I had a minimum…I knew I was different – as I indicated before, my name indicated to anybody that I was Jewish, of course –, but other than that, I was…I participated in soccer games, I was part of a team, I played…we…we did many things, we…I lived near the Danube, the Donau, and the Lobau. Have you ever heard of it?

AB: Sure.

EF: You have heard of the Lobau?

AB: Yes.

EF: We spent so many Saturday nights with my friends. They were sports…they were working children and young men, and they had very little money, but they had…they liked sports and they were very athletic. And we used to go Saturday night…we were at the Reichsbrücke. I lived ten minutes away from them. My father’s factory was right by the Brücke…die Wehlistraße, where he had his Buchbinderei, so I was very close. I walked across with groups…we were at the cross, we had blankets, we slept in the Lobau, from Friday to Sunday. And we were friends and we were very good friends and I can name names now and it is 60 years later…is it 60? Almost 60 years. I can tell you names of friends I had…that I was good friends with gentile boys: A Franzl Gardener…there war der Eddie Hutsch, Czech – many Czech though…the Czech influence is very strong in my neighborhood. – Eddie Bubl, der war der Sohn von den Schuldiener…across the street. I mean, we were close friends. We played together, we lived together…I was not made to feel different, I must admit. And maybe that hardened me, maybe that gave me some spiritual…I don’t know. Maybe it is the opposite…I really don’t know. I was very balanced and, to be frank with you, whatever happened – maybe it is my nature –, but I survived it. And I had a minimum of bitterness, to be perfectly frank. I have wonderment of how human beings can do what I saw with my eyes…and that conditions can be created for innocent people that I saw with my own eyes, I couldn’t believe. But personally, I was very well balanced in my early years. And I felt no…maybe it was selfish of me, because I had heard that there was Anti-Semitism. I personally – in the area I lived, the street I lived – I was accepted. We had a man in the building, who was a police detective, an Inspektor, in Vienna in the Ausstellungsstraße. And they…in those days it was a strict caste system. There was a high caste and a lower and a middle. This man was very honored. If you were a high officer in the police department in those days, you were a big man. He was friendly with my father. They met on a Friday night in the bar on the corner and they had a glass of beer. And my father – mind you – had a beard…a short beard, but he had a beard. And his name was Zacha. Z.A.C.H.A. – I will never forget it. They were the elite in our area…Inspektor Zacha. My mother gave my father an argument, he came home late from work and he said, “Yes, we were im Piatschek.” – this was on the corner…a bar. “And er hat mir ein Bier gekauft.”

2/00:05:51

So, we were told…I was told until the end by my friends, “Nothing will happen to you.” In all honesty, I maybe…what I am saying may not correspond with what many people say…that feel differently. There are two opinions, but I want to give you an honest answer to your question. I don’t pretend that I had any problems and maybe these people really meant it. That people…knew my father was a working man, he had a big family, he worked for his life, had big responsibilities. They knew it because we lived very close – it was a working neighborhood and we had good friends. You went one to the other…to the house. And they did not have any idea what Nazism really meant. As a matter of fact, my direct neighbor…my immediate neighbor – I lived…Tür 25 and nach Tür 24, oder 26, the next door – was a man who was an unemployed man for a long time and he had young children. When Hitler came he disappeared…he just disappeared. His wife came and said, “I don’t know where he is. I don’t know what happened to him.” It turned out six months later: He came and he said, he had been sent to Dachaubecause he was not…he didn’t want to work. So, that’s how I found out the first time…yes, I heard about Dachau. I had never heard about Dachau before. What I am trying to bring out is that we had very close friendships…my father, my mother and my sisters. My sisters less because girls were more inclined to stick with the Jewish company, you know.

But I had a bicycle and I was a boy and I played soccer and I was a street boy and I did everything everybody else did. I participated and I was no different than anybody else. I spoke the same way and there was no difference. So I have, in all fairness, I must say, whatever occurred was unfortunately…number one, I believe the Catholic Church had much to do with it because these peoples where raised as very strict Catholics. And just like we have today the problem with Muslims: If you are a Muslim, you believe in the same…in the same rights and the same liberties that…whether you are Jewish or Catholic or whatever. They did not, and the Catholic Church in Vienna, in Austria, is much to be blamed for what has happened in Austria. I don’t know if they could have avoided it. I am not sure, because as it turned out later, it was much larger…it was a problem of much larger proportions than we knew. We measured it by our own personal experience. But when we found out later that he wanted the whole world, of course, nobody believed it. He stated it clearly in Mein Kampf. Nobody read it to that extend, that you believed this was reality. But it became reality. And I believe in all fairness these people had no idea when they…when this friend of mine participated in exercises with the SS, in secret, and next day he went with me as a friend and went out with a Jewish girl on the side to a dance. He had no idea of the significance…or what it was. And I don’t want to whitewash anyone – it is not my purpose. But I am honest, I am frank and I tell you for your purpose, for history, for whatever you…you know whatever…history will be kept, that Austria is…the Catholic Church in Austria has much guilt to bear on what has happened. Whether they could have avoided it or not, I am not sure.