Best Quotes from The Stone Crusher by Jeremy Dronfield with Page Numbers

It was good to work.

There wasn’t always enough to go around, and life could be precarious for a middle-aged man with a wife and four children.

But for the Jews of Austria at this moment, implicit disdain was preferable to open persecution of the kind going on in Germany.

No matter what occurred in the world, no matter how near danger might be, life went on, and what could one do but live it?

Yet he was excluded from Schuschnigg’s Germanic Christian ideal.

Gustav, immensely proud of his service to his country in the Great War, considered himself an Austrian first and a Jew second.

Keep your head down and your mouth shut, said Jews to one another, or you will go to Dachau.

Behind the scenes, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler had flown in the day before and begun the process of taking over the police.

She wanted to capture and preserve them like this, while there was still happiness.

The suddenness with which the genteel Viennese civilization had turned was breathtaking.

Even the Nazis wouldn’t go so far yet as to condemn a war hero to a concentration camp.

In the face of this impossibility, some took their own lives; dozens each day accepted what they saw as the inevitable, and chose to take themselves out of this hopeless nothing of a life.

The police station had some disused stables, and the prisoners were herded into one of the larger buildings.

How can a dangerous, predatory animal be a friend to a human being, much less an equal? It was inconceivable.

Those labeled Zurück (return) were put back into confinement to await further processing.

It is an outrage, to the Christian conscience especially, that the modern world with all its immense wealth and resources cannot give these exiles a home.

Each prisoner was forced to identify with these calumnies, to own them and accept them.

Only one meal could be provided per child per day, so constrained were the resources.

He told his story.

In their apartment, the Kleinmann family held together, closing in around the empty space left by Edith.

Whatever happened, this diary would be his witness.

Each man an individual with a mother, a wife, children or cousins, a job, a place in the life of Vienna.

To stay safe it was vital to remain unnoticed, invisible.

We are proving ourselves.

It was the kindness of others, especially the older prisoners, many of whom were long-term veterans of Gestapo dungeons and concentration camps; they knew nothing about Fritz, yet sometimes they would risk their lives to help him.

All they saw was the Jewish star on my prison uniform, and that I was a child.

I work to forget where I find myself.

The only thing that held a man together was comradeship.

It was not good luck; neither was it God’s blessing.

In the face of unimaginable cruelty, humanity still finds ways to connect and support each other.

"It is the evil things that we shall be fighting against—brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution—and against them I am certain that the right will prevail."

"A war, even a phony war, was a time of possibility for the young, and with two high spirits far from home it was almost inevitable that they would enjoy themselves to the fullest."

"Every day another death," Gustav wrote. "One cannot believe what a man can endure."

"The kapos could always be relied on to outdo it."

"But be funny, understand?" the kapo ordered him. "Or I’ll beat you crooked."

"Some men tried to resist being consumed."

"Man against machine; on this occasion, man had won a small victory."

"The stone crusher seemed emblematic not just of the quarry but of the camp and the entire system in which Buchenwald was just a component."

"The man seemed to have tapped within himself a threefold seam of strength and will."

"Such is the insatiable nature of brutality; it will always consume those who feed it."

‘There was always another stick with which to beat them.’

‘Hope glimmered in the back of Fritz’s mind while he went on enduring the sick fever dream that passed for life in Buchenwald.’

‘Man is a creature of habit, and can get used to everything. So it goes, day after day.’

‘It was a perpetual struggle for his mother to keep him and Herta warm and fed on the little money she could scrape together.’

‘When the hate came from an actual friend, that was when the injustice of it stuck in Kurt’s brain.’

‘Our principal buildings were ranged along the top of the steep bank, and the ingenious and shameless younger boys could jump right out of the windows…’

‘The boys listened, enraptured. Most were alone, their fathers having been killed already… but hearing this story of another, better world brought them back to life, enthused and cheered.’

‘For a very short time we were able to laugh again.’

‘What would become of them?’

‘Each application needed two affidavits from friends or relatives… and support and connections were plentiful—it was the bureaucracy of the Nazi regime that presented a problem.’

We will say yes to life, for the day will come when we are free!

In here, they had the whole world in common; they were a tiny nation of survivors surrounded by a poison sea.

The camaraderie I learned in block 17 changed my life fundamentally.

He spoke to us like a father, with patience and kindness, to which we had grown unaccustomed.

What does my intellect benefit me when my name damages me?

They cannot grind us down like this; the war goes on.

This strange addition, which stood among the trees on the slope between the commandant’s villa and the quarry, comprised an aviary.

We have, unwittingly I know, added to the sum total of misery caused by this war.

The public mood had turned against interning harmless refugees.

He who has left you, he alone can measure how wonderful freedom is!

On the hill, the thick covering of snow softened but did not hide the radiating outlines of the barrack blocks and the tower‑spiked fences.

Smoke from the crematorium drifted foully in the freezing air over the camp and into the nostrils of the prisoners, the scent of their own futures.

He knew only that Tini’s world right now revolved around trying to get the children out of the country, and that her hopes were pinned most on Kurt.

The momentary terror passed, and Kurt reasoned with himself. There was no need to panic.

He knew his way around the Prater like he knew the face of a friend.

He recalled his mother hanging it around his neck. That image was vivid in his memory.

She told him how vital it was to look after this wallet. It contained his papers, and in this world now, that was as much as to say that it held his very soul, his permission to exist.

A cloud lay over Europe, roiling black and flickering with lightning.

Out of sight, beyond the northern horizon, convoy after convoy of merchant ships dragged slowly eastward toward Britain with Royal Navy escorts.

Kurt could already sense that, but for the lack of his mother and father, he had found something that felt like a home.

I know that I must die for my testimony, but maybe these criminals will restrain themselves a little in the future if they have to fear an accusation. Then I will not have died in vain.

The prisoners were used to murder as a constant presence in their everyday lives, but whereas they had learned to live in spite of it, now they were becoming resentful.

Life is getting sadder by the day, but you are our sunshine and our child of fortune, so please do write often and in detail.

The SS required no reasons for their brutalities; a bad mood, drunkenness, a hangover, a perceived slight, or just a sadistic impulse—these were enough.

Every day, the shot and slain are brought into the camp.

Their silence didn’t save them; they were murdered to the last man.

Eduard Hamber’s heroic sacrifice had been fruitless, based on the idea that the SS could be brought to account for their crimes, or at least be made to fear that they might.

I smell a rat; I’m fit for work.

This wasn’t enough to satisfy the SS; they had to ensure that every witness was silenced.

How we feel is not to be described—now shock is piled upon shock.

"My lads are true to me; we are a brotherhood, and stick tightly together."

"Everyone thinks, tomorrow morning it will be my turn; daily, hourly, death is before our eyes."

"If only we were free; but always we have the wire before our eyes."

"What do you think you’re doing, Jew-pigs?"

"Even miracles couldn’t last in a place like this."

"I hope they have good things to say about you, that you keep your things and your bed in order and that you are nice."

"Tini abhorred the very idea of being taken from her native city and was innately suspicious of the future."

"To nurture and to save was part of her makeup, and in motherhood it had its purest expression."

"I am afraid every day . . . Herta sends hugs and kisses. A thousand kisses from your Mama. I love you."

"Beyond all reason, beyond all human feeling, the world had closed off that future and irrevocably sealed it."

The lottery had finally run against him, as it did for nearly everyone.

If he didn’t know already what this meant, he would quickly learn; Operating Room II was where lethal injections were given.

Although there had been no invalid selections for several months, the prospects for any badly injured man were grim.

Gustav was tended steadfastly by a friendly orderly called Helmut and managed to cling on to life.

For the first time since his arrival in the camp—almost the first time since the Anschluss four years earlier—he was able to practice his proper trade again.

“You will have to be very brave,” Siewert said.

If you want to go on living, you have to forget your father.

He couldn’t imagine how he could possibly live if his papa were murdered.

I want to stay with my papa, no matter what happens. I couldn’t go on living without him.

Whatever lay ahead, he felt better able to face it with Fritz by his side.

The spirit of that crushed promise of long ago lived on in Fritz, in the bond that held father and son together and had kept them alive so far.

He had been born here, grown up here, bled for his country here, and now the rail tracks were bringing him back one last time, to die.

To be in its army was to be part of a martial history going back to the Holy Roman Empire.

The promise lived on, the outburst of anti-Semitism settled down to a murmur, and the Jews of Vienna continued to thrive.

If they were indeed going to die here, at least it would not be alone.

In the face of the setbacks the Austrian army had suffered since the start of the war, the capture of the cemetery was a major achievement.

Fritz felt that the only way to save his life was to identify himself to the labor commander or someone else with authority and ask to be assigned work.

Nothing about it was familiar.

The familiar-looking huts and buildings Gustav had seen along the road from the station were the remnant of the barracks intended for migrant workers.

Fritz’s rash action had saved them all from the gas chamber.

“Hold your head up high,” he said. “Lad, the Nazi murderers will not beat us!”

“Every day the departures. Sometimes it is heartbreaking, but I tell myself, Keep your head high; the day will come when you are free.”

“You have good friends by your side. So don’t worry—there are bound to be setbacks.”

“Fritz kept an eye on the progress; salvation lay in getting transferred to the construction detail.”

“Even the fittest had little chance, because the daily tide wrack of deaths was not due to chance or negligence…”

“For Gustav, his skills came together with his luck that January.”

“If one died, well, that was one less Jew to trouble the world. There were a dozen more to do his work.”

“The camp was taking shape, with fences and the foundations for guard towers being laid, and more barracks.”

“Fritz and Gustav could only marvel at each other’s will to live.”

“But how many setbacks could a man take? How long could he go on holding up his head and avoiding death?”

In confiding to Fritz, the man had broken the spell.

He carried on working without missing a beat, as if he hadn’t spoken.

These Nazis might bend him but could not break him.

Fritz couldn’t do that. It wouldn’t be long before his hatred of the Nazis became too great to contain.

No one cared that he was still the same man, with the same birth, the same character, thoughts, and history.

With their conversion to Aryan status, Gustav and the other Jewish kapos and functionaries were able to hold off Jupp Windeck’s cruelties and protect their fellow Jews.

Life would have been bearable in block 7 if it hadn’t been for two things.

They had no cause to complain about them and plenty to occupy their hands.

There was no danger now of his being selected for the gas chambers.

The misery in Monowitz redoubled.

Only solidarity and friendship and acts of kindness were strong enough to keep humans alive for any length of time.

The removal of its human toxins... was supposed to bring back the nation’s great days. But the cure was not a cure but a poison.

Lone wolves and mavericks... never lasted long against the relentless terror of the SS and the green-triangle kapos.

In the business of murder Auschwitz had achieved a kind of industrial perfection, but as a machine the system was flawed, inefficient, and subject to failure.

By resisting, it was at least possible to risk everything for something.

They cannot grind us down like this; endurance was all, misery was only for a time, hope and spirit were undying.

Fritz contemplated these things in terror... Rarely can a man’s appearance have been more at odds with his character.

Even though Fritz was smart enough to know that it wouldn’t save his life, it would at least bring the torture to an end.

Amid all this turmoil, there was little chance of one prisoner in Monowitz being taken much notice of by the camp Gestapo.

What was needed was an organized network.

But the thought that he and Leo and the other Jewish kids might ever be divided from their friends by these trivial things never crossed their minds.

Life was outside of time, invincible.

The kids of Vienna picked their joy from the streets like apples from a tree; all you had to do was reach up and it was there for the taking.

This is not what I fought for... Not that. I want nothing to do with that.

Fritz understood the danger all too well and had every reason not to trust this man Wocher.

If Fritz had anyone in the outside world he wanted to communicate with, he would get messages to them.

Alfred Wocher... wasn’t actually discharged from the army but as a skilled welder he’d been sent to IG Farben to do civilian work.

Fritz had learned discretion and didn’t mention that he was from Vienna too; instead he just listened.

You couldn’t trust Germans, especially not a veteran soldier from Hitler’s army.

It was an incongruous, improbable occasion: a group of Aryan friends and a converted Jew packing off a Bavarian soldier in Wehrmacht uniform with suitcases full of loving gifts for two Jews in Auschwitz.

It makes me so glad that I have such kind and good friends when I am so far from home.

I owe it to my will‑power and energy that it was always my choice to keep going.

I'm not letting my hair turn gray over it, because someday I will be reunited with them.

Wherever I am I am always thinking of you and all my dear friends.

Even a few of those in the military were disposed to be kind.

Their acts of resistance were small—a little food, a blind eye turned—but they saved lives.

Each day he and Schubert returned to the workshop with their toolboxes full of scraps of bread.

Even today the thought torments me... Hardening his heart against the terminally weak and dying, he gave his spare food to the young.

I tracked down this young man and discovered that he was in fact the son of the very same family, the sole survivor of the selection at Birkenau.

Many of them no longer have parents... Would they have the strength and luck to survive as he and Fritz had done?

Fritz Kleinmann did everything he could to help save lives but he craved a more direct form of resistance.

Despite his fear, he inwardly rejoiced. The escape had been a success.

They had walked out of the Buna Werke wearing their civilian disguises and disappeared.

Fritz's heart shrank in his breast; if he were identified, it would be the bunker for him this time.

The prisoners were ordered out on parade. Fritz and his comrades marched into the square as if it were roll call, but this was different.

The SS were not only seeking the five missing men but also an unidentified prisoner who had been seen talking to Karl Peller.

Over the next few days, he repeated the dangerous operation until all the guns and ammunition were inside the camp.

But despite the executions, escape attempts didn’t stop.

It seemed to me too little to procure food, write letters, or to talk about resistance.

Fritz felt a growing impatience. Now at least if the worst rumors about Majdanek were manifest here, they would be able to fight back.

Survival in this hell required more than just physical endurance; it demanded an unbreakable spirit.

Even in darkness, hope can be a flicker, a reminder that not all is lost.

To resist despair, one must hold tightly to the threads of compassion and brotherhood.

Sometimes, the greatest act of courage is just to take the next step.

In the face of unimaginable adversity, the bond between father and son becomes a lifeline.

Freedom may be only a distant dream, but dream it we must, to survive this nightmare.

Hope is a fragile flame, but the act of believing in a better tomorrow is a victory in itself.

When the body is weak, let the heart be strong; persistence is a rebellion against the oppressor.

Even amid death, the human spirit longs to fight, to escape, to live.

The journey may be dark and painful, but the possibility of freedom breathes life into a weary soul.

"Fritz would certainly have a story to tell."

"But Fritz had faith in his father’s strength, and in the destiny that bound them together."

"Fritz learned that there had been a major escape from the Death Block two weeks earlier; the whole camp had been awakened by machine gun fire after the Russians used wet blankets to short the electric fence enclosing that side of the camp."

"Those bonds that had sustained him through Buchenwald and Auschwitz were no longer there; he had cut them away when he jumped from the train."

"Grit your teeth—the SS murderers must not beat you."

"He thought of the line he’d put in his poem 'Quarry Kaleidoscope' five years earlier: Smack!—down on all fours he lies, But still the dog just will not die."

"His faith in that outcome was a rock, as firm as his belief that his boy was safe."

"Although Fritz’s escape bid had failed in the end, it had done one thing for him: given him respite, during which he’d eaten well and rested, building up his health and strength."

"Whatever the destination was, it wasn’t Dachau."

"Even the sharpest-eyed were unaware that, after they had entered, SS machine-gunners set up positions outside."

...just enough to nourish his iron will and keep his body bound to his soul.

The only plentiful thing was corpses.

Now the liberators must be here soon—and I have faith again.

I think to myself still, the lord God does not forsake us.

At last one is a free man, and can do as one pleases.

The air around us is indescribable.

Finally free!

It was both joyous and heartrending.

What he would not give to be so reunited with Tini and Herta and Fritz.

I was utterly demolished there.

The war was all but over, but the wounds would take a long time to heal.

Survival... when the nightmare—why, that would never end so long as life and memory lasted.

The hideous, miraculous, haphazard chain of events that had allowed him to evade death... had nearly finished him off at the end.

Leaving the future to take care of itself for the moment, Fritz focused on regaining his strength.

In Vienna, the wounds of the past would linger, but life still beckoned with faint glimmers of hope.

But it was a new life alone, without any family.

When he rose the next morning... he felt that a new life was beginning for him.

Out of their shared hardship, out of their separation and suffering... it was solidarity, love, and faith that had got them through it.

They were ashes from the Auschwitz ovens floating down the Vistula, bones in the soil under the pine needles of Maly Trostinets, or scattered to the world.

Gustav appreciated the slowness of the journey, relishing the freedom and the beautiful scenery.