Gerhard F. Strasser received a PhD in Comparative Literature from Brown University and taught at The Pennsylvania State University until his retirement in 2004. Having been involved with Holocaust studies at Penn State he joined the group of Ergoldsbach teachers and historians who were preparing the first exhibition (2006) commemorating the rescue of thirteen Jewish prisoners. Most recently, in preparation of the 27 April 2021 video commemoration of the anniversary of this rescue, he coordinated the contacts with the three American families of the survivors, including Moses Ancselovcis, the 93-year-old last surviving prisoner. These views are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Wiener Holocaust Library.
More than seventy years have passed since the end of the Second World War. What used to be West Germany managed to rebuild from the ruins of what Hitler’s Third Reich left behind and in due time established itself as a reliable partner in a new Europe. Former East Germany, the German Democratic Republic, continued to suffer from yet another dictatorship that refused to acknowledge any guilt or moral obligation in the persecution of Jews; its citizens longed for the freedom that West Germans had been enjoying for decades. Much of this changed with the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, when Germans on both sides of this cruel dividing line were finally free to see the other part of their country and begin to reshape the German nation.
John Weiner’s Mission
While Germans were thus rebuilding the eastern part of their united country and focusing their efforts on overcoming more than fifty years of painful neglect in the GDR, one of the last survivors of a group of thirteen Jewish concentration camp prisoners who were rescued in and around a small country town in Bavaria decided that it was time to return. John Weiner was born in Szombathely in western Hungary in 1926. In July 1944 he was deported along with his father first to Auschwitz and then to Buchenwald concentration camp. In the satellite camp, Magdeburg, they were forced into slave labour which almost ruined their health. Due to John’s poor physical condition he and his father were transferred back to Buchenwald, where he regained some of his strength. What followed was the tragic event of the father’s and son’s separation. Because of his age and bad health his father was deported to Auschwitz, where he was murdered in the gas chambers. John Weiner’s brother Miklos, whom he had long believed to be safe, was also executed in Bergen-Belsen.
John Weiner survived and was rescued from one of the death marches that had left Buchenwald in early April 1945, a procession that had crossed most of Germany before reaching Ergoldsbach at the end of the month. This was the area in the heart of Lower Bavaria where three courageous Germans, one woman and two men, saved him and twelve fellow prisoners from certain death as they tried to escape. John Weiner wanted to have this heroic act commemorated in Ergoldsbach, and for this reason, he returned there in 1991 for the first time since he had left Germany for Hungary in 1946. He visited the children of his rescuers several more times before his death in Sydney in late 2006.
This is the story of his rescue that he wanted new generations to remember.
The Death Marches of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp Prisoners from Thuringia to Lower Bavaria in April 1945
In the final stages of the war, the SS forcibly emptied the concentration camps in the face of advancing Allied armies. As they evacuated the prisoners, they also attempted to eliminate any suspicious signs. The SS Reich leadership had issued orders not to let a single prisoner fall into the hands of the Allies alive.
The first death march, euphemistically termed “evacuation march” by the Nazis, from the Buchenwald concentration camp set off on 5/6 April 1945. A second column with about 40,000 prisoners left Buchenwald between the 6 and 8 April 1945. Of all the prisoners, approximately 13,500 did not survive the death marches. The march in which Anna Gnadl, Josef Kimmerling, and Max Maurer were to play such an important role started in the first days of April 1945 at Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar and took them in a south-easterly direction across central Germany to Regensburg, then through Neufahrn and Pfaffenberg to the small towns of Oberlindhart and Ergoldsbach. The march lasted three weeks and the prisoners covered about 600 kilometers. Those who were freed in the area around Ergoldsbach stayed until they had sufficiently recovered, in cases significantly longer, and an American officer who had been assigned to the investigation of the death marches, First Lt. Ephraim S. London, recorded their accounts.
The group with John Weiner and the other twelve rescued Jews had included approximately 1,600 Jewish prisoners, mostly Poles, but also Ukrainians, Frenchmen, and Dutchmen. They were guarded by 80 SS-men under the command of a senior SS Unit leader who was known to some of the prisoners for his sadism, which they had already experienced in Auschwitz. He was about 50 years old; his most distinctive feature was his gold tooth. He was supported by five SS squad leaders who had at their disposal six horses, three carts and five handcarts for the baggage, and one for the dead. The prisoners, already severely debilitated when setting out from Buchenwald, initially got one-third of a loaf of bread daily. As the march went on, the rations constantly became smaller until they had to drink water from puddles. They were forced to wear the striped prison uniforms, which were not warm enough for the cold season; to cover their feet they had nothing but clogs, and many had to walk barefoot.
During the march, the prisoners were made to walk side by side in rows of five. As they were moving along the SS arbitrarily set their dogs on them or beat them with heavy clubs if they stumbled or could not keep up. Anyone who fell from weakness and could not get up again was shot. During the march, some 1,300 prisoners died from exhaustion, were mangled by the dogs, or executed. Their bodies were scantily covered with earth or simply left lying where they fell. The senior SS Unit leader with the gold tooth kept a meticulous account of the daily shootings and the executioners. Such cold-blooded killings took place upon a whim: a prisoner could be asked in what month he had been born and if his answer was April, he would be told: It is April now and time for you to die. It was the same procedure with a prisoner’s age. The general reason given for shootings, however, was the fact that the victim was a Jew.
The inhabitants of the places through which the eery procession moved were shocked at the physical conditions of the prisoners. They witnessed the abuse, and some tried to give bread or potatoes but were threatened by the SS henchmen pointing their guns at them. The villagers initially buried the barely covered bodies of the prisoners left by the roadside in deeper graves. Sixty-seven bodies were found in Ergoldsbach and the surrounding area alone and finally laid to rest in the Steinrain cemetery, a location that was dedicated to these victims of SS violence in 1947.
The Rescue. An Attempt at a Chronology
Thursday 26 April 1945: On 26 April the remaining survivors of the “evacuation march” reached the Oberlindhart area; approximately 150 to 200 Jewish concentration camp prisoners out of the estimated 1,600 had survived this far. At 4:30 pm the SS leader approached Centa Schmalzl, a farmer’s wife, and insisted that he needed her barn for the prisoners; he also told her imperiously that he required food. The woman farmer was startled at the sight of the human skeletons and gave the SS men twenty 100-pound sacks of potatoes, of which each prisoner was allotted six. In the meantime, the SS men beat up the Jews arbitrarily and eventually locked them in the barn. Centa Schmalzl was also placed under house arrest. The guards fed themselves in the houses of the Schmalzl and Rottmeier families. They slept there until the explosion of the Oberlindhardt railway bridge during the night of 27 April 1945, which created utter confusion.
26-27 April 1945: At 1:30 am, German army sappers, blew up the Oberlindhart railroad bridge some 200 yards away. The SS suspected that American troops were closing in and had fired on the bridge whereas the inhabitants of the local area assumed that the German Wehrmacht had caused the explosion. In utter confusion, the SS guards tried to organise what became a precipitous and disorderly departure of the prisoners. Some 20 to 40 of them hid under the straw in the barn, fled to the nearby forest, or took refuge in a nearby mill. Three of the fugitives were immediately executed on the farm by three SS guards, consistent with SS policy to shoot escapees on the spot.
Friday 27 April 1945: At 9 am Josef Kimmerling, the commander of the Neufahrn police station, encountered three heavily armed members of the SS guard unit in town who were searching for the escaped Jews in Oberlindhart. He was informed that he must kill such escapees at once; otherwise, he himself would be executed. It was therefore only by sheer chance that John Weiner and the other twelve prisoners fell into the hands of people like Josef Kimmerling or, later in the day, Max Maurer, the commanding officer of the Ergoldsbach police station, men whose humane attitude simply did not permit them to carry out such a murderous order.
In the early afternoon, Kimmerling and another local policeman were informed that Jewish prisoners were still hiding under the hay in the Schmalzl barn. With their guns cocked they demanded that the prisoners come out. Eventually, Kimmerling searched the hay, and eight fugitives came crawling out of their hiding place. After they had been fed by Frau Schmalzl, Kimmerling suggested taking them to Mallersdorf. He went on ahead by bike and a fellow policeman began to lead the captives there. However, he could not follow through on his orders and had to abandon the march near Pfaffenberg; it took a full three hours to walk the short distance as the men were in such a weakened state. In Mallersdorf the Nazi authorities could not give Kimmerling clear orders and advised him to leave the prisoners behind in the forest. The local Nazi administration was already too busy preparing its own flight. At this point, Kimmerling decided on his own initiative to undertake a rescue operation.
After returning from Mallersdorf, Kimmerling told his fellow policeman that there was no room there for the prisoners. In the end, they agreed to go back to Oberlindhart to requisition a cart; the Jewish escapees were finally transported to Neufahrn. On his way to get the cart Kimmerling met two more Jewish prisoners, one of whom lay on the ground in total exhaustion. The stronger one asked Kimmerling to shoot them both. When Kimmerling clearly rejected this request, the man realized he could trust him and introduced himself as Dr Lustig, a lawyer. The totally debilitated prisoner was a French medical practitioner named Dr Segal. Kimmerling promised Lustig to rescue them both and instructed them to wait until the other policeman came back with the cart. Eventually, Kimmerling put nine prisoners into jail in Neufahrn, where they spent the night of 28 April.
Saturday 28 April 1945: Kimmerling found out that there were more prisoners in Oberlindhart and sent another police officer to pick them up. In the end, there were thirteen captives in his custody, and he decided to take them to Ergoldsbach since there was no more room in the jail. Max Maurer, the Ergoldsbach police officer, had repeatedly observed that columns of concentration camp prisoners were marched by the SS through town towards Landshut, the district capital, but these guard details did not request the help of the local police force. Late in the afternoon of the 28 April, Josef Kimmerling came to see Maurer in his private apartment. Agitated, he informed Maurer that he had to entrust him with thirteen concentration camp prisoners whom he had picked up from a barn in Oberlindhart where they had been hiding.
At 5 pm they rode on their bikes to Prinkofen, where Kimmerling’s colleague was approaching them with his cart. Since the farmer did not want to drive any farther for fear of the approaching American troops, Maurer ordered the prisoners to get off the cart in front of Anna Gnadl’s farm. He was appalled at their physical condition. Kimmerling, Maurer and Anna Gnadl, all of them deeply moved by compassion, decided to help the captives. Dr Josua Lustig, one of the stronger men in the group, had meanwhile taken on the role of spokesman and assured Maurer that none of them would use the opportunity to escape. This reassurance was important for Kimmerling and Maurer as in the event of such an escape they would be guilty of releasing prisoners, and that would mean the death penalty for both. Kimmerling informed Maurer that Landshut was the column’s destination, and it was obvious that taking them there would result in the men’s execution by the SS. For this reason, Maurer, Anna Gnadl and Kimmerling agreed to let the exhausted prisoners stay overnight at the family’s barn.
At 6 pm Maurer left the Gnadl property after having arranged for the captives to be fed by Anna Gnadl. Around this time Maurer must have given them comfort by saying: Tomorrow is another day. Maurer directed Dr Lustig to supervise the group and above all to be on the alert for the SS. This warning was not unfounded: the very same evening three SS men came to the Gnadl farm looking for overnight accommodation. They found a spot in the stables, which were very close to the prisoners’ hiding. Luckily the SS men were too tired to notice them.
Sunday 29 April 1945: The offer of a hiding place for the thirteen Jewish concentration camp captives saved their lives, for at 7 am on Sunday morning, American troops entered Ergoldsbach. In the morning Maurer began to organise proper care for those prisoners who were seriously ill. Most of the rescued Jews stayed in Ergoldsbach and surroundings after their liberation, for with their deportation to the concentration camps they had also become homeless.
The Three Rescuers
Josef Kimmerling (1892-1953): Josef Kimmerling was born on 26 January 1892, near Regensburg and died in Mallersdorf in 1953. In 1924 he married Walburga Obermeier. Their son Walter was born in 1927. Five years earlier, in 1922, Josef Kimmerling had joined the police force. Over the years he was assigned to various police stations in Lower Bavaria and in the Bavarian Forest. From 1942 to 1945, he oversaw the local police station in Neufahrn.
Josef Kimmerling did not show any open interest in “political” matters in the years of the Nazi dictatorship. This circumstance is possibly related to his hidden social-democratic leanings. In fact, over time he developed an inner distance that intensified even more in 1945. What was important here was his sense of justice that corresponded to his own personal values, which he in fact placed above the law of the land. Even when he joined the NSDAP in 1935 so as not to endanger his professional career, everybody in the village knew about his real attitude. This was confirmed in 1945 through investigations by the US military authorities. Since 1942 Josef Kimmerling had been a close friend of Max Maurer.
Max Maurer (1891-1972): Max Maurer was born in Regenstauf on 23 March 1891 and died in Ergolgsbach in 1972. His parents worked as farmers; his father was also a shoemaker. Max’s brother Christian became a dedicated Social Democrat. Three of the six brothers and sisters chose to become police officers, amongst them Max.
In 1920 Max Maurer married Else Arsan. In 1931 daughter Martha was born. From 1935 to 1946, Maurer was the head of the Ergoldsbach police station. Even as a young police officer Max Maurer took a rather reserved stance toward National Socialism. He joined the NSDAP in May 1937 in order not to endanger his position. This late capitulation showed courage for a police officer of his rank. The arrest of his brother Xaver as well as the persecution of the Jews—he kept in touch with the only Jew living on in Ergoldsbach, Bernhard Bravmann (1871-1944)—intensified his rejection of National Socialism. He was deliberately kind to forced labourers and prisoners of war and developed a strong aversion to the Gestapo. His relations with the Gnadl Family were especially good. They were all in agreement in their rejection of National Socialism. Both the 1946 denazification court and Josef Kraus, the mayor of Ergoldsbach at that time, testified to Maurer’s attitude.
Through the efforts of John Weiner, Max Maurer was posthumously honoured in 1997 when Yad Vashem inducted him as Righteous Among the Nations. This honorary title has so far (as of 1 January 2020) been given to more than 27,000 people, including some 638 Germans, among them factory owner Oskar Schindler and now also Max Maurer. A medal that belongs to the decoration recalls the words of the Talmud: Whoever saves one human life has thus saved the entire world. It was presented by Avi Primor, at that time Ambassador of Israel to Germany, to Martha Wimbürger, Max Maurer’s daughter.
Anna Gnadl (1907-1981): Anna Gnadl was born in Prinkofen on 10 May 1907 and lived there until her death in 1981. Her grandfather Beck served as a personal guard of King Ludwig II. Anna Beck would have liked to become a seamstress; however, upon her marriage in 1932, she had no choice but to take care of her husband’s farm. Between 1932 and 1945 she gave birth to six children.
Over a long period, the Gnadl family developed an ever-stronger aversion to the Nazi regime. Even the award of the Nazi Mutterkreuz [medal given to mothers of six children or more] did not change that. Consequently, the family used the Grüß Gott salutation [May the Lord greet you, the age-old Bavarian greeting] instead of the mandatory Heil Hitler as a matter of principle and cared little about the criticism that followed. When Anna Gnadl saw the first columns of concentration camp prisoners march through the village in 1945, she did not believe the Nazi propaganda that spoke in this context of “criminals”. She was especially horrified by the health conditions of these people.
John Weiner’s Life After His Liberation and His Efforts to Publicly Recognise the Ergoldsbach Rescue
After having been rescued, John Weiner lived with the Maurer family for almost a year. He returned to Hungary in 1946, before emigrating to Sydney, Australia. There he gained local fame as a portrait photographer, and for the last twenty years of his life (he died in 2006), he was a docent at the Sydney Jewish Museum, where he often related the story of his suffering and of his rescue.
In 1991 he returned to Ergoldsbach, learned with regret that his saviours had died a long time before, whereupon he did everything he could to have them granted an honourable memorial. And while John Weiner and Andrew Rauchwerk, another escapee, were successful in having Max Maurer inducted in Yad Vashem, Weiner continued to visit Ergoldsbach almost every year and was instrumental in bringing about the 2005 exhibition there entitled, Das hätte doch jeder getan!’ Die Rettung der 13 Juden von Ergoldsbach durch Anna Gnadl, Max Maurer und Josef Kimmerling, which has been traveling across Bavaria. In addition, an English version of the exhibit, Anyone Would Have Done That, was shown in 2008 at The Pennsylvania State University and is now available for electronic distribution through the American Association of the Teachers of German (AATG) in Haddontown, New Jersey.
Epilogue
This has been the story of a rather well-documented rescue effort on the part of three Germans who were not willing to tolerate the Nazi atrocities when they saw them first-hand, the story of people who consequently risked their own lives to save at least some of the thousands of fellow human beings who were marched across Germany at the end of the Second World War.
After rescuing thirteen Jews, Anna Gnadl, Max Maurer, and Josef Kimmerling continued to lead modest lives. They did not attribute any particular importance to their actions; for them it was but an act of simple humanity to which they felt committed out of Christian compassion. It would be misleading to see any political motivation behind it, except for the fact that the Nazi system with its utter contempt for humanity placed a heavy burden on their consciences, a feeling of guilt from which they may have achieved some release by acting the way they did on the spur of the moment.
In the late 1940s, at a family meeting in Regenstauf, when they were talking about the Nazi period and the war Max Maurer said in an almost surly voice: “I wish this whole thing could finally be forgotten.” Perhaps he was referring to the slander he had to endure in connection with his acts of rescue (he was accused of opportunism on the verge of the collapse of the Nazi regime by some townsfolk), but surely, he was also of the opinion that there was no need to make such a fuss about what had happened. Johann Gnadl, son of Anna Gnadl, expressed this in a similar way when he answered the question, “Did your family often talk about the night of April 28?” with the simple statement, “No, that wasn’t anything special for my mother, anyone would have done it!“
Their actions–and those of other Germans at the end of the war, as they are slowly coming to be known over the last few years or so–were based not on politically motivated resistance but on compassion, on altruism, in short on fundamental ethics without any great political claims.
Suggested further reading and resources
- “Das hätte doch jeder getan!” Die Rettung der 13 Juden von Ergoldsbach.
- Ausstellung des Geschichtsarbeitskreises Ergoldsbach
- “Anyone would have done that!” The rescue of concentration camp prisoners in Ergoldsbach by Anna Gnadl, Josef Kimmerling and Max Maurer in 1945 at the end of the Second World War.
- The liberation of the camps: the end of the Holocaust and its aftermath by Professor Dan Stone
- Concentration camps: a short history by Professor Dan Stone
- The Death Marches: The final phase of Nazi genocide by Daniel Blatman
- Auschwitz Chronicle, 1939-1945 by Danuta Czech
- Oral history interview with John Weiner – USHMM
- The Library’s digital database, Testifying To The Truth, has over 40 eyewitness accounts of the death marches. You can explore them here.
For more related sources, try a search for any of the following keywords in our Collections Catalogue: death marches; forced marches; liberation; survivors; postwar, displaced persons
The Library’s current exhibition, Death Marches: Evidence and Memory, uncovers how forensic and other evidence about the death marches has been gathered since the end of the Holocaust.
