A Death in Vienna

“On March 14, the Gestapo broke down the door of this very apartment and stole our most prized possessions: our rugs, our silver, our paintings, even our Shabbat candlesticks. My father and I were taken briefly into custody and forced to scrub sidewalks with boiling water and a toothbrush. The rabbi from our synagogue was hurled into the street and his beard torn from his face while a crowd of Austrians looked on and jeered. I tried to stop them, and I was nearly beaten to death. I couldn’t be taken to a hospital, of course. That was forbidden by the new anti-Jewish laws.”

In less than a week, the Jewish community of Austria, one of the most vital and influential in all of Europe, was in tatters: community centers and Jewish societies shut down, leaders in jail, synagogues closed, prayer books burned on bonfires. On April 1, a hundred prominent public figures and businessmen were deported to Dachau. Within a month, five hundred Jews had chosen to kill themselves rather than face another day of torment, including a family of four who lived next door to the Kleins. “They shot themselves, one at a time,” Klein said. “I lay in my bed and listened to the whole thing. A shot, followed by sobs. Another shot, more sobs. After the fourth shot, there was no one left to cry, no one but me.”

More than half the community decided to leave Austria and emigrate to other lands. Max Klein was among them. He obtained a visa to Holland and traveled there in 1939. In less than a year, he would find himself under the Nazi jackboot once more. “My father decided to remain in Vie

Klein tried to pour himself another cup of tea, but his hand was shaking violently. Gabriel poured it for him and gently asked what had become of his parents and two sisters.

“In the autumn of 1941, they were deported to Poland and confined in the Jewish ghetto in Lodz. In January 1942, they were deported one final time, to the Chelmno extermination camp.”

“And you?”

Klein’s head fell to one side-And me? Same fate, different ending. Arrested in Amsterdam in June 1942, detained in the Westerbork transit camp, then sent east, to Auschwitz. On the rail platform, half-dead from thirst and hunger, a voice. A man in prison clothing is asking whether there are any musicians on the arriving train. Klein latches onto the voice, a drowning man seizing a lifeline. I’m a violinist, he tells the man in stripes. Do you have an instrument? He holds up a battered case, the only thing he had brought from Westerbork. Come with me. This is your lucky day.

“My lucky day,” Klein repeated absently. “For the next two and a half years, while more than a million go up in smoke, my colleagues and I play music. We play on the selection ramp to help the Nazis create the illusion that the new arrivals have come to a pleasant place. We play as the walking dead file into the disrobing chambers. We play in the yard during the endless roll calls. In the morning, we play as the slaves file out to work, and in the afternoon, when they stagger back to their barracks with death in their eyes, we are playing. We even play before executions. On Sundays, we play for the Kommandant and his staff. Suicide continuously thins our ranks. Soon I’m the one working the crowd on the ramp, looking for musicians to fill the empty chairs.”

One Sunday afternoon-It is sometime in the summer of 1942, but I’m sorry, Mr. Argov, I ca

“The Sturmba

KLEIN LAPSED INTO a long silence. A car hissed past in the street. Klein lifted his head and began to speak again. He was not quite ready to make the co

The community had numbered 185,000 before the war, he said. Sixty-five thousand had perished in the Holocaust. Seventeen hundred broken souls stumbled back into Vie

“I didn’t want their money,” he said. “Six thousand dollars? For what? My mother and father? My two sisters? My home? My possessions?”

He tossed the check onto the table. Gabriel sneaked a glance at his wristwatch and saw it was two-thirty in the morning. Klein was closing in, circling his target. Gabriel resisted the impulse to give him a nudge, fearing that the old man, in his precarious state, might stumble and never regain his footing.

“Two months ago, I stop for coffee at the Café Central. I’m given a lovely table next to a pillar. I order a Pharisäer.” He paused and raised his eyebrows. “Do you know a Pharisäer, Mr. Argov? Coffee with whipped cream, served with a small glass of rum.” He apologized for the liquor. “It was the late afternoon, you see, and cold.”

A man enters the café, tall, well-dressed, a few years older than Klein. An Austrian of the old school, if you know what I mean, Mr. Argov. There’s an arrogance in his walk that causes Klein to lower his newspaper. The waiter rushes across the floor to greet him. The waiter is wringing his hands, hopping from foot to foot like a schoolboy who needs to piss.Good evening, Herr Vogel. I was begi