I think I should have killed him myself…
ERWIN SCHAEFFER, SPEAKING OF REZSŐ KASZTNER1
ERWIN SCHAEFFER’S family didn’t make it onto the Kasztner train. They had paid for their seats, of that Erwin is sure. It was June 18, 1944, a Sunday. His parents had already moved to the Star House next door to their old home, but that day they returned to the cellar.
He remembers listening to two men2 tell his father that the rumors they had heard about the death camps could well be true. There was a train leaving in the next few days for Palestine via Spain or Portugal, they said, and a few seats were still available. But only a few.
He remembers his father going into the wine cellar with a shovel and digging under the wooden shelves of fine wines while Erwin waited and watched. His father had been a wealthy man, a wine and spirits importer, and the house servants took care of everyday things. Digging up the cellar floor was the most physical thing Erwin had ever seen his father undertake.
His father dragged out a small, metal box and extracted from it handfuls of gold sovereigns and a velvet bag of jewels. With all those pieces packed into his pockets, he returned to his old study, where the same two men were waiting. They stood in their raincoats, their hands in their pockets, despite the warm weather. They had enjoyed glasses of Schaeffer's most expensive brandy and smoked and chatted with Erwin's mother while his father dug in the cellar.
When they took the bag of gold and jewels, the men asked if Erwin's father could buy a couple of extra tickets for orphans who had no money of their own. Erwin is certain his father obliged. He had always been a generous man.
Erwin was sixteen, a tall, good-looking lad with light-brown hair, blue eyes, the build of a football player. At school he was known as a scrap-per, the guy you didn’t tangle with unless you were sure you were stronger. Years before, he had sometimes defended his friend Peter Munk when the smaller boy was set upon by bullies. At home, his mother thought Erwin had too many opinions. He and his sister did not want to go on the train, and he was finally able to convince his father that he and his sister would be safe with gentile friends in Budapest. Their older brother, who had returned there from Paris, had an apartment and perfect gentile identity papers, though he was in hiding from the Gestapo. They could live with him. The whole family was sure the war would be over in a few months. Then they would be reunited, and life in Budapest would return to normal.
On that hot day of June 29 as people started gathering for the train's departure, the clothes Erwin's parents wore included warm sweaters and socks and their winter coats. There wasn’t much room for suitcases in the wheelbarrow, and they wanted to make sure they had adequate attire for the long journey.
When Erwin accompanied his parents to the Columbus Street camp's gate, they found a swarming mass of people jostling to get in. The crowd formed into three or four lines, all angling toward the narrow gate where a uniformed German stood. Erwin wore a khaki, belted leather overcoat and stayed well apart from his parents. He hoped he would be mistaken for a youth member of the Hungarian Arrow Cross. He was tall, blue-eyed, muscular, tough. He knew how to look the part.
He watched his parents join the line, and he circled the crowd until their names were called.
Some sixty years later, Erwin Schaeffer, on another hot summer day in Budapest, walks to the back of the Great Synagogue in Dohány Street, past the rescued gravestones and the memorials. There, in the shadow of the new reconstruction, is a silver tree. It's about ten feet tall, its branches reach out and up, its leaves are all shiny metal pieces. The whole tree shimmers in the afternoon light. Each leaf bears the name of a person who was murdered in the Holocaust. One leaf, a small one nailed to the trunk of the tree, holds his father's name.
His hand touching the leaf, Erwin stands quietly, gently rocking backward and forward, murmuring a prayer for his father—and perhaps also for himself.
“My parents were thrown off the Kasztner train,” he says, softly.
“Kasztner, I think, had oversold the train. In the end he had more people than tickets. So when the train was about to pull out of the station, he sent a couple of German goons down the length of the train to remove some passengers. When my father showed his ticket, the goon didn’t even look at it. He tore it up. They accused my father of traveling with false papers, claiming he hadn’t bought the tickets in the first place. Then they frog-marched my parents to the doors and threw them down on the siding.” Erwin wipes his face with the sleeve of his well-tailored jacket. It is pearl-gray, his tie a soft peach.
For six months thereafter, the Schaeffers hid in their older son's apartment on the Pest side of the river. Erwin, the most Aryan-looking, shopped for food and essentials. He is certain that Rezső Kasztner sent a messenger to his father to apologize for the dreadful misunderstanding in all the confusion at Columbus Street and to explain that another train would be leaving shortly. That was the last time they had word from Kasztner.
Then, on January 13, 1945, with the Soviet army bombarding the city, the Germans retreating across to Buda and the war almost over, Erwin's father ventured out for fresh air. He thought they would check on his daughter Klara, on the Buda side of the river. Erwin was walking with his father along Városház Street. It was almost five o’clock, near curfew. A drunk in an Arrow Cross uniform recognized Erwin's father and shouted: “It's the Jew Schaeffer! I know him. I used to work for this pig, guarding his wine! How do you like me now, Mr. Schaeffer? How do you like the new rules?”
Several of his fellow thugs grabbed Erwin's father by the arms and handcuffed him. One of them hit him in the chest. The other went after Erwin.
Until that day, Erwin had thought he was brave, but now he denied he was with his father. “Never seen this man before. Don’t know him.” He heard his father's voice over the loud voices of the Arrow Cross men: no, he had never seen the young man before. Never.
A passing German army officer stopped to watch the commotion. “Let's settle this now,” he ordered. “You,” he pointed at Erwin, “unbutton your pants.” They were a few steps from City Hall, near the Palace of Justice. No one stopped to stare when Erwin unbuttoned his pants by the side of the building. The German didn’t wait to see his circumcised penis. He yelled: “See, the boy is a gentile!” And he grabbed Erwin by the shoulder to propel him toward Váci Street. “Run, dammit.” And Erwin did.
They took his father to 14 Városház Street, the last stronghold of the Arrow Cross in Budapest. Two days later, with a group of about thirty naked, beaten, terrified men and women, he was marched to the edge of the Danube and shot.
Erwin Schaeffer and Peter Munk have remained friends for over sixty years. They do not talk about Rezső Kasztner or the train.