The unbelievable story of Donald Watt More than fifty years after Auschwitz the Holocaust has become a self-serve facility from which academics and journalists, educationalists and politicians, artists and film directors and many others can select at random whatever suits them. In this competitive market the only products which can be sold at a profit are those offering new revelations, promising provocative theses and which in addition are easily accessible. Effective market strategies are also required to increase and satisfy consumer demand. This trend has assumed international dimensions. The current Goldhagen debate is indicative of this. Centred on Germany's "eliminationist Antisemitism" and "Hitler's Willing Executioners", it has attracted considerable attention in Australia. In this country, not long ago, it was Helen Demidenko-Darville who caused a sensation when her antisemitic pamphlet "The Hand that Signed the Paper" was honoured with the highest literary award. That controversy, it seems, is fading, superseded by a new, unbelievable story: Donald Watt's "Stoker" - "The Story of an Australian soldier who survived Auschwitz-Birkenau". Comparisons are inevitable. Demidenko's "novel" revitalised the powerful historical myth of the "Jewish-Bolshevist conspiracy" in order to explain and to justify the "revenge", the brutalities and bestialities unleashed by Nazi collaborators in the Ukraine against the Jews. The murder of the Jews remained unpunished. The young Australian writer of British extraction saw no purpose in bringing perpetrators to justice, among them members of her "invented" Ukrainian family who had found refuge in Australia. She chose rather to mount a stinging attack on the Australian Nazi war crimes investigations and trials. Donald Watt's "memoirs" are of a different nature. Written by a war veteran, it depicts horrors of the Holocaust which are not based on personal experience, but rather taken from other sources or even invented. The "recollections" culminate in the author's claim to have been a stoker in Auschwitz-Birkenau engaged in the burning of the bodies of murdered Jews. In Watt's autobiographical account too historical myths receive new impetus. An attempt is made, I believe for the first time, to forge a link between the Anzac legend and the reality of the Holocaust. This is heralded by the graphic design on the book's cover. It sports a photo of the author as a young, congenial looking man in the uniform of the Anzacs, his hat worn in typical "Aussie" fashion. This photo is superimposed on a black and white drawing of the barbed wire fences and the watch tower of a Nazi concentration camp. The symbol of the ordinary Australian incarcerated in Auschwitz-Birkenau is a clear one. Remarkable are the following lines on the back cover: "Don Watt's narrative embodies the man himself: modest, straightforward, understated, courageous and laconic. In spite of the horrors he witnessed and those in which he was forced to participate, Watt remains a hero in the tradition of the true Australian Digger." The unbelievable stoker story begins as an ordinary POW story, the authenticity of which is not being disputed here. Born in Mildura in August 1918, Watt enlisted in the AIF in January 194O, as an unmarried man, without any stated religious affiliation and as a labourer by profession. Three months later he set out from Melbourne, his journey leading him to various theatres of war - Palestine, Egypt and Greece. The successful Nazi invasion of Crete put an abrupt end to his career as a combat soldier. In early June 1941 he was captured and transported to Germany, together with thousands of other defeated servicemen from England, Australia and New Zealand. Donald Watt spent almost four years behind barbed wire, first in Stalag XIII C, a POW camp located close to the North Bavarian city of Hammelburg and later in Stalag 357. As the records reveal, Stalag 357 was originally a satellite camp located 2 miles from Stalag XXA established near the city Thorn in Nazi occupied Poland. In 1944 it has presumably been re-located in the face of the Russian advance. By then Stalag 357 was situated at Oerbke, a small village near the North German city of Fallingbostel. Stalag XIII C and Stalag 357, both places of military detention, are recorded on Watts' official "Service and Casualty Form", kept by the Australian Army, Southern Command. It obviously took some time before the German Wehrmacht notified the Australian authorities of his whereabouts. On 3 December 1941 the following report was received from the Casualty Section: "Previously reported missing in action now officially confirmed Prisoner of War. Place of detention. Stalag XIII C." On 3 July 1944 the message arrived: "Now interned Stalag 357." There is no entry in his army records (now housed at the Australian Archives, Victorian Office. Series B 883, Item VX 8006) which points to a transfer to a concentration camp administered by the SS. Donald Watt was liberated in Stalag 357 in April 1945 and returned to Australia in July of that year. He was formally discharged from the army in September 1945. Then, at the age of 27, he set about establishing for himself a new, secure existence. In his words this meant "getting married, settling down and getting a job" (p. 139). More than forty years were to pass before Watt saw fit to break his silence. The timing of this was far from arbitrary. In 1987 the Hawke government, against the background of the emerging Nazi war crime debate, agreed to compensate veterans who had been "illegally interned in a Nazi concentration camp" and "subjected to brutal treatment". Encouraged by his wife Joan, Watt lodged an application for compensation. A "Concentration Camps Committee", established to examine each case, needed some time to decide in Donald Watt's favour. This was due to the lack of evidence in his military records. However, his medical records pointed to symptoms consistent with suffering as a result of harsh treatment. Moreover, a report issued by the International Tracing Service of the Red Cross based in Arolsen/Germany confirmed his incarceration in a camp. This report was not made available to me. In 1990 Watt received a non-taxable lump sum of $ 10,000, compensation to which, in my opinion, he was fully entitled. This official recognition of his ordeal presumably provided him with the stimulus to reveal the full story in public. A first version appeared in 1991: a booklet of some 50 pages entitled "I Was There Too". It was printed at his own expense and had a circulation of 500. The news of "The story of an Australian POW sent to Auschwitz for trying to escape" - as the booklet was subtitled - spread quickly. Journalists and other interested persons lost little time in approaching Watt. Inspired by these contacts and the discussions they led to, Donald Watt continued his writing, the sheer process of which appears to have unleashed a certain creativity in his remembering the past. Watt himself described the phenomenon this way: "... the more I wrote, the more I started to remember" (p. 169). He expressed the same experience following interviews: "More memories came back after that interview, and I was soon remembering enough for a third draft to be written..." (p.169). After the third a fourth draft followed, submitted to and accepted for publication by the renowned Simon and Schuster publishing house. Whatever exact form this long and creative process of recollection and recording may have taken, it is difficult to avoid the impression that the author step by step manoeuvred himself into the role of the "hero" and in doing so recalled events and deeds which he came to perceive as historical truths. It is undeniable that he had a number of helpers in the piecing together of his story. In my view, these helpers played a not insignificant part in facilitating and even encouraging the adoption of this role. The result is a construction of fact and fiction. As far as the sections dealing with the Holocaust are concerned - and it is they alone which concern me here - they are not based on Watt's personal experiences but rather on other sources and contain numerous inaccuracies. Even certain linguistic formulations provide evidence of the unauthenticity of his so-called eye-witness accounts. The language employed deviates from expressions used or images presented by survivors who experienced the horrors of the Holocaust. The following are examples selected from the extensive list of historical fabrications. In early summer 1941, upon his arrival in Germany, Watt recalls the stopover of a deportation train loaded with women and children at the railway station of Hammelburg: "We knew they were Jewish, because they were wearing a Yellow Star of David on their clothes and in some cases had the word Jude stitched on them as well. They were taken off the train and were so filthy it seemed they had not been able to wash or shower for days. They certainly had not been fed. The guards threw loaves of bread to them, and they literally fought each other to get a piece. Shocking to watch, there was almost a stampede to get to the bread, and many women and children were trampled underfoot and crushed to death. We had never, in the whole of our lives, seen anything like it. We would only stand there, powerless to put a stop to the appalling scene we were witnessing" (p.56/57). In fact, such a horrific scene never took place in Hammelburg. None of the historical records contains a reference to this spectacular, public crushing of women and children. Donald Watt appears to be the lone witness to that event. Furthermore, in Summer 1941 German Jews were as yet not stigmatised by Yellow Badges nor had the process of systematic deportation started. It was only in Autumn 1941 that the last avenues for emigration were finally sealed and the first transport shipments were sent East to the sites of organised mass murder. Ostracised by German society, the Jews were now forced to wear the Yellow Star and wait until they were assigned their place on the deportation list. When they embarked on their final journey, as a rule in Third Class passenger wagons, they did not look like the passengers portrayed by Watt - filthy, emaciated, fighting for bread. However, horrific scenes occurred at other places, in particular in the Nazi occupied territories of Eastern Europe. German civilian authorities complained repeatedly about "unpleasant incidents" which disturbed the otherwise smooth running of the deportations officially termed "Eisenbahnjudentransporte" ("Rail-Jew-Transports"). The journeys often lasted several days. Herded together in hermetically sealed cattle wagons, the victims were exposed to the extremes of heat or cold, of hunger and thirst and the most appalling sanitary conditions. Many perished en route to Auschwitz and other death camps. Numerous Jews attempted to escape. At regular intervals bodies were found at the side of railway tracks: the bodies of Jews who had been shot by train guards while attempting to escape or who had been fatally injured while jumping from the moving train. Escape attempts by allied Prisoners of War incurred draconian sanctions. Donald Watt claims to have escaped from Stalag 357 in Thorn in Spring 1944 and marched through Central Europe, only to be recaptured at the German-Swiss border. His arrest was followed by lengthy interrogations and torture. He alleges that in the Bavarian city of Nuremberg his transfer to Auschwitz-Birkenau was ordered. However, it seems more than unlikely that an escaped and recaptured Australian POW would have been sent to this particular camp. Allied prisoners of war remained, as a rule, under the jurisdiction of the Wehrmacht. The principle of military and international law applied even to Jews serving in the British or American, French or Dutch, Canadian or Australian armed forces. Kept in separate compounds they survived the Nazi program of the "Final Solution". The German military refused to hand Jewish POWs from western countries over to the SS, concerned that their murder could endanger the lives of German soldiers and civilians interned by the Western powers. No such consideration was taken into account in the war of destruction waged against the Soviet Union. Of 5,7 million Russian prisoners taken 3,3 million perished, a death rate of 58%. Two specific groups were targeted for immediate liquidation: political "commissars" of the Red Army and soldiers of Jewish origin. Allied POWs were also incarcerated in concentration camps. A group of Australians was detained together with prisoners from other Western countries in a special compound established within the perimeter of Theresienstadt. Thousands of POWs served as slave labourers, however, not in death camps but in separate compounds of satellite camps, such as Blechhammer or the POW labor detachment at the IG Farben Buna factory in Auschwitz-Monowitz. Among them were some Australians, a small number of whom are still fighting for compensation today. It is quite feasibly that Donald Watt, after an unsuccessful escape attempt, was locked up in a high security military installation or transferred for disciplinary reasons to a concentration camp. It is just as possible that he was deployed there as a stoker for heating installations or that, imprisoned in close proximity to death camps, he received the news of the gassing and burning of Jews and other inmates. Since 1944 Stalag 357 was situated very close to death camp of Bergen-Belsen. Donald Watt's alleged journey at the end of April 1944 from Nuremberg via Bergen-Belsen in Northern Germany to Auschwitz-Birkenau in Upper Silesia is a fabrication. The explanation given for the detour to Bergen-Belsen is grotesque. In 1991 Watt wrote: "We travelled (by train) with a lot of stops till midday when over came our planes again and wrecked this lot of rail lines. The guard got another motor vehicle but because our planes were bombing the roads also we were not able to continue to Auschwitz. Instead the guard took me to Belsen. My stay here was to be until the roads were safe" (p.48). The updated, stylistically refined version of 1995 reads as follows: "With all the bombing that was taking place, I think (the guard) lost his nerve a little and decided to take the easy way out, heading for what he guessed would be safe territory, ... we arrived at a camp called Belsen... "(p.83). In Bergen-Belsen, Watt claims, he encountered inmates "wearing prison shirts with yellow triangles" (p. 85). Jews incarcerated in the so-called "Sternlager" of Bergen-Belsen were indeed marked with Yellow Stars most of which had the Dutch inscription "Jood" (Jude). However, they were not dressed in blue-grey concentration camp uniforms but rather were granted, as inmates of a "transit-camp", the "privilege" of continuing to wear their own clothes. Watt says that he discovered huge mass graves and observed how dead bodies were thrown into the pit, layer by layer. He describes camp conditions which anticipated the later inferno. He is obviously drawing on the images which after the liberation in April 1945 were disseminated worldwide through the press and which resulted in the name Bergen-Belsen becoming a metaphor of organised mass murder. In Bergen-Belsen Watt was exposed to another sensory experience, one which established a link to his native Australia: "There was a smell, a strange smell that rekindled memories of my youth around Mildura. I noticed the smell the moment we arrived at Belsen, but somehow I pushed it to the back of my mind. Then the smell was in my nostrils again, insistent, demanding attention, a smell that caught at the back of my throat and made me want to gag. I then recognised it for what it was. With my mind going back to the lush fields of Mildura, I remembered the times I had come across a cow or a sheep that had strayed out of a paddock and had been hit by a car or truck. By the time I came upon the carcass, it was usually rotting away in an advanced state of decay. And that's what I could smell around Belsen: the smell of death" (p.83/4). The "smell of death" was the result of murder through poison gas. In 1991 Watt declared: "When I... went for a walk in the compound and caught a glimpse of Russians digging I then realised that this was where the bodies from the gas chambers were being disposed of." (p.48). In 1995 he maintained: "It was during this time (in Auschwitz) that I realised how I 'd managed to escape the gas chamber at Belsen" (p.89). However, there were no gas chambers in Bergen-Belsen. There were presumably also no fellow inmates who could provide him with information about gas chambers operating in Auschwitz. After one week spent in Bergen-Belsen Watt continued his fictitious journey to Auschwitz: "...it was starting to dawn on me: I was being sent to a death camp" (p.87). According to Watt's own account his papers were processed upon arrival in Auschwitz-Birkenau (p.87). There is no documentary evidence of this. Part of the bureaucratic routine was a registration process involving, in case of non-Jewish prisoners, the compilation of an individual camp dossier, the taking of a photo, the allocation of a prisoners' number as well as of a specific insignia indicating the reason for imprisonment. This served to make clear to everyone the position or "category" of the new arrivals within the prisoner's hierarchy. Names and numbers were also recorded on cards and lists and constantly updated, in order to administer accommodation, food supply and labour deployment. In the extensive, though not quite complete archival-documentary record system of Auschwitz, not a single reference was found confirming the arrival and incarceration of an Australian POW named Donald Watt. There is no entry in the "Bunker-Buch" painstakingly kept at the time to support his claim that he spent two months in an infamous underground cell block. After his release from the "Bunker", Watt commenced his work as a stoker. Allegedly assigned the Jewish "Sonderkommandos", he witnessed and participated in the gruesome work carried out at gas chambers, mortuaries and crematoria. Watt states categorically and repeatedly: "I saw it, I was there". (p.84, p. 171). Testimony given by a few survivors confirm a simple fact: The Jewish "Sonderkommandos" operating in Auschwitz-Birkenau consisted only of Jews. Presumably on 2 November 1944 the murders by poison gas in Auschwitz-Birkenau came to a halt. The dismantling of the killing installations began. In the course of the attempt to eradicate all traces of the horrific crimes committed all prisoners were liquidated who could have given evidence in later trials. A few owed their survival to pure chance. Even this explanation could not apply in Donald Watt's case. He records that he was officially discharged as a stoker and transported to Germany at the end of November 1944, rejoining his Australian mates in a POW camp near Hannover - Stalag 357. In his army record there is the entry: "31.4.1945 ...Recovered POW arrived UK ex Western Europe". The unbelievable Stoker-story has enjoyed a remarkable reception in Australia. Within a short period of time the first edition was sold out. The second edition is under way. Positive reviews appeared. Not one questioned the authenticity of the Holocaust accounts. Even historians and other experts were not struck by the inaccuracies and fabrications. Professor W. D. Rubinstein's brief review, published in the Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal in 1995 (vol. XII, part 1, 159), can be only regarded as an embarrassment. This eminent scholar of Jewish history praised Watt's "autobiography" as a "most unusual testimony"; ... "one of the most important written by an Australian". As he goes on to explain: "Watt's very important memoirs are deeply important for many reasons. Most centrally, they give the absolute lie to "Holocaust denial" propaganda, being based on the eye-witness accounts of an ordinary Australian. To Anglo-Celtic audiences, especially of young people, Watt's memoirs are likely to be more relevant than those of Jewish survivors, however vivid, and will have the effect of bringing the Holocaust closer to their own experiences". As a "survivor" of Auschwitz-Birkenau Donald Watt sought and found recognition and support among genuine Jewish Holocaust survivors. The Sydney based Jewish Museum, especially its founder and patron John Saunders, encouraged and endorsed the Stoker-story. The Steven Spielberg Foundation hastened to record/videotape the unbelievable story as part of its monumental "Oral History Project" on the Holocaust. Preparations for international lecture-tours have already been made. The manuscript has been sent overseas. A few month ago the Frankfurt based Fritz Bauer Institute, one of Germany's documentation centres for the study of the Holocaust, was asked if it would recommend a German edition. The film rights have been sold. The Australian production has already commenced, presumably with the expectation that the Australian Stoker-story will equal the spectacular success of Spielberg's Hollywood movie "Schindler's List". No less a person than Barry Kosky, one of Australia's foremost and outspoken cultural critics, has been asked to direct the film. However, Donald Watt's "memoirs" were not universally applauded. Criticism came from abroad. Members of the Research Institute of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington questioned the authenticity of Watt's testimonies. The Fritz Bauer Institut rejected the manuscript for translation into German. Yad Vashem, Israel's official documentation and research centre on the Holocaust, was asked for an expert opinion report. The Stoker-story was examined by Gideon Greif, an authority who had just published a documentation on the Jewish "Sonderkommandos" ("Wir weinten tränenlos... Augenzeugenberichte der jüdischen Sonderkommandos." Köln; Böhlau et al. 1995). He concluded that Watt "at no time had been a member of the Sonderkommandos in Auschwitz-Birkenau... The author describes a reality of the everyday life of the Sonderkommandos which never existed". In May 1996 a negative report arrived from the Museum of Auschwitz. Dr. Franciszek Piper, Director of the History Research Department, could find no record of the imprisonment of a "British subject/citizen/person of Australia" (...sic byly jeniec brytyijski z Australii...), let alone an Australian POW serving within the ranks of the Jewish "Sonderkommando". Like Greif, Piper stressed the numerous errors and inaccuracies, raising serious doubts as to whether the author really was a witness to the events he recalls. All relevant POW record collections kept at British and German archives have been examined. They provide no evidence in support of Donald Watt's Holocaust story. The response of the Army Historical Branch of the British Ministry of Defence reads as follow: "We have no records which would confirm or deny his presence at Auschwitz, either in the concentration camp or of the I G Farben factory." In my view, it is futile to debate the Stoker-story further, even if, as is to be feared, antisemites and revisionists will seize the story and exploit it for their own purposes. Experience has shown: historical documentation and democratic education are not always effective strategies to put an end to their noisy campaigns of hatred and Holocaust "denial". Moreover, historical myths are known not to disappear easily. It is one of the most important tasks of the historian to counter with every means at his disposal the creation and dissemination of historical myths. If historians do not fulfil this obligation or if their warnings are ignored, the way is paved for ruthless manipulation and falsification of history. Konrad Kwiet is Porfessor of German Deputy Director of the Centre for Comparative Genocide Studies Macquarie University Sydney, Australia
