When Eichmann Came: A Personal Experience
Hungarian Jews arrive at Auschwitz; Courtesy of USHMM
In this column, we dive into the rich history of Jewish Life, the precursor to Jewish Action. Published by the OU from the 1940s to the 1980s, Jewish Life offers a unique window into the vibrant evolution of American Jewish life during the 20th century.
The article below appeared in the December 1960 issue of Jewish Life.
Yes, we really thought that we had made it! It was the beginning of autumn, 1944, German troops were taking a beating on all fronts; Russian soldiers were penetrating deep into Hungary—in fact they were no more than a hundred or so miles away from my hometown Bratislava, capital of Slovakia, where I still lived with my parents in the “Judengasse,” right in the center of the Ghetto.
Slovakia, they said, was the Switzerland of the Axis! Apart from newspaper reports and civil defense exercises the Slovaks knew little about the war. Business was flourishing, food plentiful—ration books were a formality which everybody had but never really used—and the war was a distant affair that made exciting reading.
Until the second half of 1944, the only visible change that occurred in the country as a result of the war was that the country managed to rid itself of over eighty percent of its Jewish population. That was “independent” Slovakia’s only contribution to the war.
In 1940, Adolf Eichmann’s senior deputy, Dieter von Wisliceny, came to Bratislava as official “German Adviser” to the Slovakian Government. First he “advised” them on the implementation of the anti-Jewish Nuremberg laws on Slovakia’s nearly 100,000 Jews, which involved the “aryanization” of Jewish business and property; the introduction of the “Yellow Star”; restriction of movement, travel, recreation, education, professional practices, etc., on all Jews. Then, in 1942, with the full and enthusiastic support of the government, he arranged the deportation of Slovakian Jews to the Nazi horror camps at the rate of one thousand Jews twice a week. Quietly the non-Jewish populace watched their Jewish neighbors being dragged away to death camps, readily they moved in the following day to take possession of their homes and belongings.
As the months went by, the appearance of a Jew in the streets of Slovakia, with his yellow “Judenstern” firmly sewn on his left lapel, became a rare sight.
Desperate efforts were made by the leaders of a helpless people to avert complete destruction. Clandestine meetings of communal heads took place day after day. Incessant appeals and pleas to the Slovakian authorities were made, but the transports, ordered by Eichmann, kept rolling. Then, as only about 15,000 Jews were still in the country, these leaders decided on a last effort: direct to Wisliceny they went with an offer of cash for lives. Wisliceny wanted to think it over. Then, after a few days, he called them: “I will accept your offer! I have discussed the matter with Eichmann and I shall cease deportations for 100,000 dollars in cash! Eichmann gets the money!”
That was in the autumn of 1942. In four installments these men gave Wisliceny his one hundred thousand dollars in cash, and we lived.
Early in 1944, Eichmann moved in on Hungary’s Jews. He shipped them to Auschwitz at a fantastic speed. He ordered special “reception” facilities at the annihilation camp of Auschwitz to “cope” with transports of a thousand Jews almost every day. Many of them went straight into the gas chambers—Eichmann was breaking his own speed record in murder.
We, in Slovakia, were considered safe. Thousands of our Hungarian brethren made a desperate dash across the border. Hundreds made it, others didn’t. Eichmann’s men mowed them down at the borders in the dark of the night. Hungary’s Jews were held tightly in Eichmann’s grip.
Secretly our leaders informed the Budapest Jewish heads that Eichmann can be “bought.” They tried. But Eichmann, who was prepared to “sell” a mere 15,000 Slovakian Jews for dollars, was not prepared to deal on equal terms with nearly a million Hungarians. Here he proposed his infamous demand for “10,000 new trucks, coffee, tea, and medical supplies” in return for life. The bid, unfortunately, failed and Hungarian Jewish blood flowed like the stream of the Danube.
Summer of 1944 arrived. The partisans began their anti-German activities in the Carpathian hills of Slovakia; Bratislava was bombed; Russia marched into Hungary, encircling Budapest, and coming nearer; the Allies were chasing the jack-booted Wehrmacht on all fronts. There wasn’t a day without a few air-raid warnings. Our hopes rose. At last, we felt, the Germans were too worried about themselves and had no time for the Jews.
But, we forgot about Eichmann. He wasn’t concerned with the war. His only task was the murder of Jews. Disregarding the imminent collapse of his Reich, he took time off to look at the handful of Jews still living in Slovakia. And while Hitler ordered his tanks and troops into our land, in August 1944, to wipe out the partisans, Eichmann dispatched his right-hand man, S.S. Hauptsturmfuhrer A. Brunner, to replace Wisliceny and deal with the Jews. Brunner was a skinny, small, and ugly creature who limped heavily. Only in his uniform did he appear to lose his obvious inferiority complex.
Brunner, like Eichmann, was a notorious Austrian Jew-baiter who by then had the lives of thousands upon thousands of Jews on his conscience. Brunner, like his superior, was canny, ruthless, and fast. Brunner, like Eichmann, boasted openly that he had prepared himself well for the future and that he “would never be found!”
Brunner pretended that he was not particularly interested in those few thousand Jews still in the country. He made out as if he wanted to negotiate “a deal” rather than go to the trouble of rounding up every Jew and re-commence deportations. He made the leaders of the Jewish community feel “at ease” when he held meetings with them.
And so, one night after deliberately spreading a rumor that he was leaving the country for a few days and that the Jews had nothing to fear while he was away, this canny murderer ordered his S.S. troops to capture all Jews in Slovakia. That night, the night following Yom Kippur of 1944, Brunner made the country “Judenrein” and the cattle wagons to Auschwitz rolled once again.
Desperately my parents and I, together with about a hundred other Jews, took refuge in an old castle near Bratislava under the cover of false South American passports. We had these passports ready as a last and final effort to save ourselves from deportation. The Slovakian police accepted our passports as true and valid, and held us under their protection in that castle as “alien internees.”
We spent Yom Kippur and Succoth in that castle. One day after Yom Kippur a few fugitives from Brunner’s night-raid on Bratislava took refuge in the castle and our number grew to 180 men, women, and children. As the days went by so our hopes of survival rose.
But there was no hiding from Brunner. On the morning following Simchath Torah, out to the castle came a bus-load of S.S., led by Brunner himself.
“Passekontrolle!” he yelled, as he pushed the Slovakian police guard aside and entered the castle. Within a few hours he had us all lined up on the lawn and by morning we were all behind barbed wire in the Slovakian detention camp Sered.
On the second day of Rosh Chodesh Marcheshvan our transport halted at the gates of Auschwitz. On that day I saw my parents—and most of the others in the transport—“selected” to the ranks of the millions of Jewish martyrs, our Kedoshim, who were to give their lives as a price for their religion.
With G-d’s word on their lips they were taken to the gas chambers, the last transport to go to the chambers prior to Himmler’s order of their closure.
After the war Dieter von Wisliceny was caught, tried before a court in Bratislava, and hanged. Now, fifteen years later, Eichmann is to account for a crime for which he will never be able to pay.
But where is the last of that trio of killers — S.S. Hauptsturmfuhrer Brunner?
B. Unsdorfer’s articles have appeared periodically inJewish Life.He served as general secretary of Agudath Israel in Britain and was founder of its community newspaper, The Jewish Tribune. At the time of this writing, Mr. Unsdorfer was editor of the English youth magazine, Haderech.