The Austrian: A War Criminal's Story Read online

  The Austrian

  A War Criminal’s Story

  Copyright 2015 Ellie Midwood

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  My whole life long, I was ceaselessly in need of love and support, though I let this show as little as possible.

  Ernst Kaltenbrunner

  Prologue

  Nuremberg prison, October 1946

  So this is it. They came for me after all. I couldn’t say that I didn’t anticipate it after my guard asked me warily what I preferred for dinner, and with a strange gleam in his eye handed me a full plate with a fresh salad and even a full size sausage that none of us, incarcerated here, had seen in over a year. Then I knew it was all over with. I was expecting them.

  They turned the lamp on only in my cell, so the others could continue to sleep soundly until their turn came; when the MP would open the door to their cell, almost soundlessly, and order them in a quiet voice to get dressed in their courtroom clothes. There wouldn’t be any time left to panic, to cry in agony, as you realized that your life would be over in just minutes, as the death’s scythe was already being mercilessly held over your head.

  Scythe… My ancestors were scythe-makers, long time ago, before my grandfather Karl Kaltenbrunner broke the family tradition and became a lawyer; the pride of the family, the one who everybody always looked up to and asked for advice. I worshiped my grandfather. I wanted to be like him, an imposing, authoritative figure who always knew what to do… And here’s what I became instead.

  Why am I thinking of it now, I pondered, while buttoning down my jacket on top of my sweater, with stiff fingers. It’s freezing down here, like it’s always been, but why do I care to put on this damn sweater instead of a shirt when I’m about to be hanged in less than ten minutes? And why the hell am I thinking about my grandfather and those damn scythes? But what else am I supposed to think of? My children, who will have to grow up without their father? My country, which will condemn my name for eternity? Her? No, I can’t think about her, or else I’ll break down again, and God witness, I want to die like a man, with dignity. At least this they couldn’t take away from me.

  I raked my hair with my hand in some nervous gesture, and let the MP Officer cuff my other wrist to his. I smirked as he was doing it; did they expect us to try to run? Or attack them? I’d lost almost a quarter of my weight there, just like the rest of them, and there were four guards around me, all armed. Maybe they thought that we’d attack them in the hope to provoke them to shoot us, so we’d die like soldiers and not like dirty street criminals, hanged on the rope for the crowd’s entertainment? But we are too spirit-broken to do even that. Hang us. Do whatever you want, just finish this misery for God’s sake!

  I followed the MP out of my cell to never come back. The prison hallway was silent and somber, and the guards on their posts turned away their faces as soon as our small procession approached them. I still felt their looks on my back as we passed them. They knew where we were heading, and couldn’t bring themselves to meet my eye.

  As one of the MPs opened the door, I stepped inside the brightly lit gymnasium, where the soldiers were playing ball probably just hours ago, and I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that I was a performer stepping on a stage for my last show. So this is how it all ends, in a gymnasium with three gallows next to each other, in front of the MP and the international press, I’ll die like a dog. At least they had draped the bottom of the gallows with black cloth, so as not to traumatize the ‘sensitive’ journalists with the disgusting view of our hanged bodies.

  Sensitive, alright. So sensitive that they ran like a bunch of hyenas towards us to take a better shot to sell it for their press back home. I bet ‘Stars and Stripes’ will pay them nicely for this night. Look at this one, eagerly putting something down in his notebook, starving for some story to get paid a higher price for. No, you little worm, I won’t start crying and begging for my life, not going to happen. I’m still a general of the German army, and they can’t strip me of this last sense of pride by taking my uniform off me. Can’t hold my gaze, can you? Even Himmler couldn’t, and you aren’t worthy enough to shine Himmler’s shoes, you little pathetic nothing. And by the way, I hated Himmler.

  The MP walked me to the gallows and threw a quick glance around prior to taking the handcuffs off my wrist. His hands were surprisingly warm and steady, not like most of them, who had cuffed me before and always shook slightly as they did it. I couldn’t remember seeing him before either.

  “They’re using the short drop instead of the traditional long one.” I could hardly hear him whisper, as if he was almost talking without moving his lips, all while he was messing with the cuffs. “The rope won’t break your neck, you’ll start suffocating slowly. Try to remain as still as you can till the doctor comes in.”

  I completely ignored the last sentence, for it didn’t make any sense to me. Instead, I concentrated on what he said before that, and I hesitated for a moment wondering if I should punch the sadistic bastard for giving such ‘great news’ to me. They wouldn’t even hang us decently, they wanted us to strangle deliberately to make sure that we died as slowly and as painfully as possible, in the hopes of avenging all our deeds. Even in Mauthausen we used the long drop, I thought to myself bitterly, as I counted thirteen steps to the top of the gallows, where the priest and the executor were waiting for me.

  The priest started saying something, but I couldn’t even make out his pointless words. Probably some soul-saving nonsense as always. I shook my head at him and turned to the executor in front of me. I just wanted it all to be over with.

  “State your full name, please.”

  “Ernst Kaltenbrunner.”

  “Would you like to say some last words?” he asked me, holding the noose in his hands.

  I stepped onto the opening of the gallows, which would become my gates to hell in less than a minute. I wetted my lips and took a deep breath.

  “I have loved my German people and my Fatherland with a warm heart. I have done my duty by the laws of my people, and I am sorry this time my people were led by men who were not soldiers, and that crimes were committed of which I had no knowledge. I fought honorably. Germany, good luck.”

  They tied my legs together and cuffed my hands behind my back. I looked straight ahead as they placed the black hood over my head. And then the whole world disappeared and I saw her face again. When she came to visit me several days ago, it being my last wish before the execution, she promised me that we’d meet in the next life. She didn’t believe in hell or heaven. She was Jewish. I preferred to believe what she believed in. There is no hell under my feet. I smiled as they tightened the rope on my neck - only freedom.

  I was almost happy when the slot under me opened, and I fell through its welcoming emptiness.

  Chapter 1

  British prison, May 1945

  “Here, make yourself at home, Your General Highness!”

  A fat, nasty looking guard, with several missing front teeth, threw a threadbare, thin blanket in my arms, and with a gruesome smile slammed the door closed in front of my face. I tried my best to contain the rage burning my lungs from the inside, and tried not to slam my fist through the door. The door was several inches of thick steel, and having cracked knuckles on top of everything wouldn’t add anything positive to my current situation. They were waiting for me to do something of the sort, and I wasn’t going to give them such pleasure.

  I looked around the cell they had put me into afte
r flying me from Austria, where they had arrested me just days ago. I was in handcuffs, as if they feared that I might decide to throw a fit and kill at least one more of them before they locked me up. I didn’t blame them; when you’re escorting a 6 foot 7 inch giant with my build, someone who was known as the ‘Little Himmler of Austria,’ I’d be nervous too. I bet the scars on the left side of my face didn’t seem too reassuring to them either.

  Ah, the good old times, when we were nothing but a bunch of drunken, feisty students in the University of Graz, swiping fencing swords at each other while holding a bottle of cognac in the other hand. It’s very hard to teach your body to take a hit deliberately, when your brain instinctually yanks you away from the deadly weapon. It’s only a natural instinct of survival. But there was nothing instinctual about us; we weren’t animals after all, we were the descendants of the ancient Aryan Gods, and we were above all the other weak humans… At least that’s what we were taught back then.

  They never understood us, the non-Aryans that is; they thought that fencing, and especially fencing scars, were nothing but a barbaric tradition, and would look in horror at yet another deep slash on a handsome student’s face.

  “Why are you mutilating yourself like that?” the international students, who’d come to study law together with us, would ask in disbelief. We’d just smirk and answer nothing, because they wouldn’t comprehend the sacred meaning of it.

  Because we are men. We are the Aryan warriors, and our women love our scarred faces. It was proof of our pride and courage, of our strength, and of our despise of physical pain; that’s what makes us Germans. I sighed. It feels like it all happened in some other lifetime, and definitely not to me.

  I made four steps towards my new bed, if that tiny cot with a thin, moth-eaten blanket instead of a mattress could be called so. I bet I won’t even fit here with my legs straight. I tried to lay down and stretch fully, and smirked at the sight of my feet hanging from the other end. No, not a chance. Oh well… I turned to one side, pulled my long legs to my chest and stared at the dirty wall with peeling paint hanging off it. Home, sweet home.

  _______________

  Ried im Innkreis, Upper Austria, July 1910

  “Erni, come home, son! Your father’s already at the table!”

  My mother’s melodic voice, coming from the front porch, distracted me from trying to get to the bird’s nest on the far end of the tree branch that I was currently hanging off. I desperately wanted to see the little newborn birds, but knowing my father and his intolerance to disrespecting my mother – and being late for a meal was a disrespect in his eyes – I quickly climbed down the tree, miraculously not scratching my knees.

  In fact, I would never disrespect my mother. I loved my mother more than anybody in the world: her always smiling hazel eyes, her loving hands she’d often put on my face to cover it in kisses, her tender embrace when she’d put me on her lap to read a fairy tale together. We’ve always had some special connection, me and my mother. I know that she tried her best not to show it to my brothers, but I have always been her favorite son. Even when Werner was born and I, a two year old spoiled by her undivided attention, made a scene and told my poor mother to take that screaming, ugly thing back to where she brought it from, she rocked me in her arms and swore that she would never love anyone like she did me.

  “You are my little angel. No one will ever take your place in my heart, no matter how many brothers or sisters you have,” she said in between the soft kisses she was covering the top of my head with. Reassured by her words, I soon fell asleep right on her chest with a thumb in my mouth. She’d still allow me to do that, even though my father hated the childish habit and would slap my hand anytime he’d see me put it near my mouth. I learned not to do it in front of him.

  My mother welcomed me at the porch with the warmest embrace, and messed my hair. As I sat at the table across from my father (it was Sunday and he wasn’t at his office), I caught the disapproving look in his dark brown eyes.

  “Therese, how many times did I tell you to cut the boy’s hair?” He addressed my mother with his powerful voice. “If you let it grow a little longer, you might as well put a yarmulke on him, because he’ll look like a Jew with payos. I’m not bringing him looking like this to Linz.”

  My mother put a hot plate with schnitzel in front of me and affectionately brushed the curly bangs off my forehead. “He doesn’t look like a Jew, Hugo. He’s a very handsome little boy.”

  “Sure he does. Look at him!”

  “Hugo. Stop it.”

  I was too young to understand it back then, but with time I realized how sensitive my father was about our Dinaric appearance, which was considered to be inferior to the Nordic Aryans residing in neighboring Germany. The Germans always looked down at us, and mercifully allowed us to consider ourselves Aryans, almost like them; only, of course, if we had no Jewish blood in us. But, we still weren’t like them, with our dark looks and our distinctive accent, which would be also sneered at behind our backs.

  There couldn’t possibly be any Jewish blood in my family. My ancestors had lived here, in the northern Alpine region of Austria, as long as they remembered, and there were no Jews around back then. They only started pouring into the country from Poland and Russia around fifty years ago, after the government initiated pogroms in their countries that made them flee in search of a calmer place to settle.

  They were very industrious people, the Jews, and highly intelligent. They studied our language and our trades, and soon assimilated into our society. Some of them, the non-religious that is, even converted into Protestantism and Catholicism and became almost undistinguishable from us. But, it was the ones who kept their faith and proudly observed their traditions who caused the native population’s loathing and slow rejection. I was only seven, but I knew by then that I’d get a good beating from my father if I talked to the Orthodox boy, who lived four houses away from us. Too bad that he was the only one of my age living so close. So, I had to spend my days hanging from the tree or helping my mother around the house instead of playing with him.

  “When are we going to Linz?” I looked up at my father, chewing on my schnitzel.

  “Don’t talk with food in your mouth, young man. Next month, just for you to start school. The one here is for farmers’ children, and I want to raise something worthy out of you two.”

  My father picked up a piece of bread and smeared it with butter. I was watching the tight muscles playing under his tan skin under the rolled sleeves of his shirt. Lawyer or no lawyer, on his day off he always helped my mother to cut the grass around the house, to fix the roof or a fence, or anything else that a delicate woman wouldn’t manage. He did it all playfully, with ease, grinning at my mesmerized gaze. He was a very tall man, my father, and strong like a bull. Back then I couldn’t even dream of growing up big like him. I ended up outgrowing him by three inches.

  “I’ll be going to school in Linz?”

  “Yes. Both you and Werner, when he’s big enough.” My father winked at my younger brother. “Therese, cut Werner’s hair too, it’s too long for a boy his age.”

  “They both look so adorable with longer hair.” My mother smiled at me and Werner.

  “They’re not supposed to look adorable, they’re not girls. They’re boys, so make them look like boys, please!”

  “I’ll cut it before the moving, dear.”

  “Just make sure that Ernst looks presentable for school. Linz is known for its education and culture throughout the whole of Austria. I want my son to have the best education possible, but, for starters, it would be nice if he wouldn’t get a beating from local boys for looking like a girl.”

  “I’ll cut his hair, Hugo, I promise.”

  I wasn’t listening to them anymore. I was chewing on my food hastily because I couldn’t wait to get back to my tree and the baby birds in the nest. Maybe I’ll get close enough to pet their down with one finger… No, I can’t do that because then their mother would smell
an alien scent coming from them and throw them out of the nest. I’ll just take a look then. Maybe bring them a worm or a bug if I find one. But I won’t touch them.

  I’d never hurt something innocent like that. One summer my grandfather Karl asked me to go to the other side of the farm to see if a rabbit was caught in one of the traps, and to bring it home so my grandmother could make a nice stew out of it. I couldn’t be prouder to receive such an important, adult task, and to have a real, very sharp knife in my hand to cut the metal cord around the rabbit’s paw, which held it in place in the trap. I went off, walking through the tall grass, swinging the knife in front of me, bursting with enthusiasm to make my grandfather proud.

  And then I saw him. A grey, big eared rabbit with sad, black, beady eyes, trembling at the sight of me; his executioner. I crouched beneath the shivering animal and gasped in despair, seeing that the soft grey fur on his back paw was all covered in blood, from the cord cutting into it deeper and deeper from his attempts at releasing himself. Trying to fight the tears, together with revulsion from observing his ugly wound, I carefully stretched my hand to the rabbit, and very slowly drew my knife between the cord and the paw. I finally released the poor animal, but he didn’t even try to run to save his life. He just sat there, still shivering, still looking at me with his big eyes, too afraid to make a move.

  I felt so guilty for some reason, as if I did it to the poor bunny, and not my grandfather’s trap. Sobbing quietly, I picked the rabbit up and pressed it to my chest, careful not to touch his wounded paw.

  “I’m sorry,” I kept repeating quietly, kissing the rabbit on his warm head and stroking his soft fur. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so very sorry! Please, go before they catch you, please go!”