Before I Go

Stories Against Forgetfulness

1938 - 1945

Name : Alfred (Fredy) Pietsch

Birth Date : 7 June 1925

Birth Place : Vienna

Profession : Typesetter

Fredy Pietsch: "Hitler brought destruction and need upon us and also stole our youth from us. The suffering of the victims of this regime should not be in vain. It is important for us to report on it. I was very young and was not capable of great deeds then. But I always tried to be a person. Thus I was able to offer help, through small acts of humanity.

Information on his life before, during and after the Second World War:

Alfred "Fredy" Pietsch was born in Vienna on 7 June 1925 as the son of a well-known professional Viennese musician. He spent his childhood and youth in the humble surroundings of Vienna’s 16 district, in Ottakring. There, in the Sandleiten Public Housing Project, he experiences the need of the 30’s. He lies shaking under his blanket as shots ring out in the halls of the housing project in February during the Civil War of 1934. In 1938, a few days after the annexation, he sees Adolf Hitler amongst the triumphant acclaim of the masses on Vienna’s Mariahilferstrasse shopping boulevard – a contagious celebration. But Fredy’s mother can sense evil. The 13 year-old starts campaigning for Hitler for a slice of bread spread with lard and an apple. And he is deeply dismayed at the sight of Jews cleaning the sidewalk of Wilhelminenstrasse with toothbrushs… In the German Youth (Deutsche Jugend, DJ), he quickly recognises the unrestrained manner with which the group leaders, the so-called "Führer", exercise power!

In October 1942, at the age of 17, Fredy Pietsch is called to work in the Reich’s Labour Service (Reichsarbeitdienst). He experiences the humiliating and tortuous methods himself. In the course of his duties he is assigned to the Warsaw Ghetto. He becomes a German Wehrmacht soldier in April 1943 and is increasingly confronted with the inhumanity, intolerance and lack of respect of the governing system. Despite his fear, he always chooses to act humanely.

An injury saves him from the hell of the Eastern front. In December 1945, he make an adventurous return to Vienna from a Prisoner of War Camp in the United States. He works at the Austrian National Bank as a typesetter from 1946 until his retirement.

Fredy Pietsch is married (for the second time) and has one step-daughter. He is an enthusiastic athlete and still, at the age of 76, participates in senior citizen skiing races. Cycling and tennis are amongst his favourite sports.

A book with the 1935-1945 remembrances of Fredy Pietsch is due to be completed shortly, it will be published in 2001.

The election was simply designed, it was a question of marking "Yes" or "No" to Hitler and the National Socialist system. And then my mother came home - I can remember this clearly - and she said, "Daddy, what is it about these elections, I had to stay at the desk, I didn’t even go into the polling booth, I had to cross off ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ in front of the men in their SA uniforms. I didn’t even dare to say ‘No’, because they kept a close eye on me." My mother was very unsettled by this and said, "I tell you, nothing good is going to come from this," and then she and my father had an argument.

Before this election, we boys were of course always playing in the streets, and one time a man came and said, "Come with me, come with me!" He said we could go to a Greißler, (a small local deli) called Jerawa, that was in the Public Housing Project on Sandleitengasse. If we climbed on a car and shouted election slogans we would be given some bread with lard spread and an apple (at the Greißler) We said, "If we get some bread with lard, we’ll do it."

And with all my friends on the block, we ran to the shop, and there actually was bread spread with lard, and we could have some of it and an apple. Then they said, "You have to put on a white shirt - borrow one from your Dad if you don’t have your own - and you should wear white knee-socks and Lederhosen." This was almost a kind of uniform, the white shirt and white knee-socks, many people wore it, ‘the illegals’ of the illegal National Socialist Party also wore these white knee-socks.

Then we all ran home and quickly got a white shirt and the white knee-socks - I really did borrow the shirt from my father, it was a bit too big - and then we climbed onto the lorry. On the front, there was a banner with a swastika and one slogan I can still remember. We, all the boys, drove through Ottakring-Hernals on this car. "If motorways you want to use, Adolf Hitler you must choose", that was the slogan we had to shout, (laughs) among other slogans.

So we drove around for a few hours or so and then we came back and were very happy that we had been allowed to drive around in a car.

Yes, in 1939 I finished school.

A few days later I got called-up. I was 17 years old, 1942, and so, conscription. I had my physical and was of course fit for service, 1.80m, slender, a tall fellow. "1.80, you’re in", and a few days later I got called for the labour service. Seventeen year olds were usually given labour service to do first. Three to six months of service for 25 Pfennig- that was all we earned. Everyone has to do labour service and everyone has to go to the army, that was a song we sang.

I registered on October the 17^th 1942. I had to report to the Northwest station. So I went there with my suitcase. My mother and my girlfriend, who was my fiancée at the time, ... came with me, and then we said goodbye in the departure hall and were led to the train. And well, we got into the wagons and then the yelling started. Before that, they were good and very nice to us, and then all the yelling started and what-not.

After that, we went all the way to Silesia. To Upper-Silesia, close to the Polish border, and into a labour service camp there. There were about fifty of us from Vienna, and we got out of the train. We had to walk three kilometres uphill with our luggage and the gate was wide open. The parade ground - a big one - and big brick buildings, with two storeys, were the barracks.

We went into the camp and in the middle of the parade ground, there was a man in patent-leather boots and riding-breeches, wearing the brown labour service uniform of the German Reich. The arm band with the swastika also belonged with that uniform, which is why it was sometimes mixed up with the SA, with the political organisation. But we weren’t a political organisation. Since we had to work, it was called the labour service.

When we walked in there we saw a few Viennese men in the group, whom we called ‘Wiener Schlurf’... ‘Wiener Schlurfs’ wore their hair in a certain style very high in front, long hair, very high in front, to make the so called ‘Lahmwelle [in Viennese dialect] and at the neck, the ‘swallow tail’. The long hair was put on top of the other part, and greasy brilliantine was rubbed into the whole thing, so that the hair would keep shape. And there were about 5, 6, 7 of these so-called ‘Schlurfs’ with this hairstyle with us.

So we stood in front of this man with his patent-leather boots and all of a sudden he says, "I would like to introduce myself. My name is ‘Unterfeldmeister’ Wiawalla and I am a true Prussian and you are bloody Viennese wimps. We will teach you how to waltz." And we were all completely silent for a moment and really almost shocked, and suddenly one of the ‘Schlurfs’ at the back says, "You know, you can kiss our ass." (in Viennese dialect) – I’m sorry to say this so frankly, but (laughs), that’s how it was. We were all laughing because that was so to the point, this answer to his affected behaviour, he says, "You know... and so on."

But well, we didn’t laugh for that long. We didn’t laugh long and he (the Unterfeldmeister) didn’t even understand what the young man had meant and what he had said. Since he said it in Viennese dialect and so (laughs) fortunately the Unterfeldmeister didn’t get it.

Then it all started: being giving overalls and uniforms, getting a hair-cut. Our hair had to be cut to a length of three fingers wide, or two fingers wide above the ears. A cropped hairstyle -- the ‘Lahmwelle’ and the ‘swallow-tails’ were gone of course.

One day, a ‘SS-Scharführer’ came with a few men and a lorry and said he needed a few men from the labour service to help furnish a guard-room. We had to get the furniture. In Warsaw proper, there was a big warehouse for the middle sector of the Eastern front, where mainly furniture and spare parts for cars, tanks, and the things were kept. We went there by car. We didn’t know of course where we were going and what we had to furnish. We were counted off and up on the lorry and I was in.

And we loaded the furniture and then drove to the Warsaw ghetto. One has to imagine the Warsaw ghetto, as if our first district was enclosed by a wall, as had already happened by 1942. And the ‘SS-Unter-‘ or ‘Oberscharführer’ said to us, "We will drive into the ghetto now and, there, is the guard-room that you will help furnish." And as we drove into it, we naturally saw what was going on there as well.

Masses of people had been rounded-up there. There were, Polish police aides on the streets in addition to the SS guard team. Children and people who could not move anymore were lying on the pavement. It was really depressing to see this, these masses of people, all with the yellow star and of course, one saw, that the Jews were rounded-up there. One couldn’t get in there so easily. We unloaded the furniture and I asked the ‘Unterscharführer’, "What, what will happen to these people here? There are so many herded together in these ruins and damaged houses, partially riddled with bullets, what will happen to them?"

He said, "Don’t you worry boy, they will be taken behind the frontlines where they will build airports and streets. We need them to work for us. The Jews finally have to work. There are just poor conditions for here, since we’ve got so many of them together. When they work, they will get proper provisions." In reality, they were not taken to work, but to the concentration camps and they were gassed.

I actually only got to know that after the war. I didn’t know that concentration camps existed.

And so we came to a sector of the front and that was... August the 20th 1944, a day of paramount importance to me, it was one of the hardest experiences I had in the war. In fact, the Russian army had drawn together an incredibly large amount of troops and - most importantly - many tanks there. The so-called ‘T 34’, as they were called, they were very fast, manoeuvrable tanks. On the 19th of August, at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, no, it was on the 19th of August in the afternoon that this - I was sent up to the front line to observe tank movements next to a guy who observed the artillery, with him I, well, shared this fox-hole and he said, "We can expect a large-scale attack by the Russians in the next few days."

At night, one constantly heard tank movements and he said, he said to me, he was an experienced soldier at the front, he was a ‘Oberleutnant’, "Tomorrow it’s going to start." And the morning came, it was open, slightly hilly terrain, August, part of the harvest had already been stacked in harvest stacks, the spikes of grain. At four o’clock in the afternoon, the Russian army suddenly attacked our positions with many of these so-called "Stalinorgeln" - ‘multiple rocket launchers’. Chaos broke out and suddenly, in the middle of this chaos, I would guess about 100 Russians tanks came over the hills. But not straight in our direction, otherwise I couldn’t sit here and tell you this story, but to the side of us, at the flank, in the direction of a village.

But in the village, ‘the Tigers and Panthers’ of the SS were already camouflaged in houses. And they fired furiously. There, in no time, 20, 30 of these Russian tanks burned, but because our ground troops had advanced ahead of the tanks, our own artillery was firing on us too. It was hell. One cannot imagine surviving that.

I fired a few shots then with my cannon, and all of a sudden my cannon failed. Obviously, an angel intervened then, since I am sure that there were later attacks on my line as well. It was only the point, a wedge, a wedge of the attack, and I radioed to the head of my company and he said, "Retreat." And I could retreat from the front line. A weapon that doesn’t work isn’t any good, and as it turned out, the barrel at the back had become loose in the breech-block and that is why the pin couldn’t hit the cartridge anymore. I then directed a tank into a ditch and could already see the Russian infantry. As I looked out of the ditch I was shot just below my left shoulder, yes, a bullet lodged in my body under my shoulder bone. I fell and my driver stood above me because the Russian planes, the battle planes, attacked at low altitude and also threw bombs, and so I had some protection.

Then they pulled me out from under there and onto the next lorry, which carried ammunition more or less to the front, they stopped one, my group, and put me onto the back of the lorry, and I was actually lying on ammunition [laughs], and they brought me to a form of niche for the wounded, the emergency first-aid station. That was a few kilometres behind the front line.

For me, that was more or less the most horrendous part, to see 100, 150 or 200 seriously mutilated people lying about: severed leg, arm cut off, shot in the head, holding their intestines. To sit there, there was screaming and yelling, it couldn’t be worse in hell than to experience something like this.

The whole village was in flames and I was taken to the staff doctor and then to the head physician. He examined me, cut off my shirt sleeve and opened the dressing my comrades had bandaged me with, because blood had been shooting out of the wound. He examined it and said, " Oh yes" he said, "That’s nothing special, it’s only a graze. We’ll dress the wound and you’ll go to the front again." and I said, "No, it’s not a graze. The bullet‘s lodged in the body. I feel the bullet lodged in the bone." And he probed deeper and said, " Yes, it must be operated on." He then put a sign on me that read "Standing Casualty for Operation, "

It was already dusk and planes were still flying low-level, dropping bombs. I tried to get into one of the last ambulance cars that came. First the seriously wounded were ‘loaded’ and then there was space for 2, 3, 4 sitting wounded.

There were 3 in there already and I said, "I also want to get in, otherwise I’ll lose my arm. I’ve got a bullet lodged in my arm, I don’t want to lose the arm. I have to be operated on in the sick bay behind the front." The driver did not want to take me with him and I said, " Take me with you, or it’ll be your fault if I lose my arm."

And he then got me in with difficulty, closed the door behind me, and I was incredibly lucky to get, I believe, about 50, 60 km away from the front. There was, I think, a school in Kielce, that’s what the town was called, and there were two or three physicians on duty. They took care of the seriously wounded first. I got a tetanus [-injection] in my backside immediately upon arriving and had to wait on the third floor. I was up there for two days, and the arm was already blue and swollen, and as the doctor came in with his team I shouted, "Doctor, can you please examine the arm. I’ve got a bullet lodged in my arm."

And he bent down to me and whispered, "Where do you come from ?" and I said, "Vienna" and he said, "I’m from Salzburg. Take this man!" And while going down the stairs, as they led me down, he came to me again and said, "Downstairs there is a bus that goes to a hospital train; the hospital train goes to Germany. If I operate without an anaesthetic, you could get on the hospital train. If I give you an anaesthetic though, then you’ll be at the front in a week’s time again, or the front will be here already." I said, "Do whatever you want with me, but I want to be on the hospital train."

So, two men threw themselves on my feet, one man lay on my chest and stretched my arm and tried to find the bullet with a probe. I think I got an injection, but I can’t confirm that a hundred percent. He found the bullet with the probe, cut me open and then with great difficulty pulled out the bullet.

Then, he held it to my face and said: "Do you want to keep it?" I said yes. And he wrapped it in bloody bullet in cotton wool and put it into my watch-pocket, we had a watch pocket. After that, they took me down to the bus. So I got on and there was an empty seat in the first row, where I sat down. The medical orderly came and said, "Do you want some black coffee?" I said, "Yes," and I took the cup in my hands and then I passed out. I was out cold, I was miles away. My nerves couldn’t take any more.

After that, I woke up as if in a dream and saw only white, white, then there was a nurse next to me and the train was rocking gently and I said, "Is this heaven?" And she said, "No soldier, we’re going home." And I was lying there in this beautiful white bed in the hospital car. I almost couldn’t believe it. I was still completely dirty from the front. I had a black face. And so that’s how I came to belying in the hospital train and then to the hospital in Thüringen.

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Copyright © 2001 by Ruth Deutschmann, Wien