Alexander Altmann A10567 (24 page)

Alexander thanked his mother for lunch and headed back to the barn. Sari was waiting for him in her stall, her head cocked towards the barn door.

“How about a ride?” he said, pulling a saddle from the straw. Sari nickered and dipped her head for the bridle. Alexander tightened the girth and led her outside, grabbing the reins in one hand and a handful of mane in the other. He slid his foot into the stirrup, swung his leg over Sari’s back and landed in the seat. He didn’t hunch over and make himself small or look around to see who might be watching. He sat up tall and asked Sari to go. She took off through the yard, at the touch of his heels and stopped at the front gate.

“Spitz!” Alexander cried, when he saw his dog digging at the fence. He leaped from Sari’s back to scoop the dog from the ground, rubbing his belly and his back before lowering him to the ground.

“Find your ball. When I get back we’ll play catch.” He climbed back onto the horse and took off at a trot. Sari bounced along the rutted dirt road and slid into a canter, passing farmers at work tilling the fields and women bent over their baskets, pulling vegetables from the soil. Alexander’s neighbours stared at him wide eyed, as if seeing a ghost.

He ran his hands over Sari’s windswept mane and coaxed her into a gallop. Sari knew where to go without being asked. She flew down Gregor Lane and cut through the woods, scaring the birds into the trees.

“Whoa.” Alexander closed his fingers around the reins and brought the mare to a stop outside an empty paddock, the paddock he’d visited more than a dozen times with Anton.

He hopped off the horse, pulled a hunting knife from Sari’s saddlebag and, balancing the sign his mother had saved for him on a fence post, scratched Anton’s name from the wood and carved his friend’s name in its place – a boy who shared the same dreams he had, and the same demons.

He hammered the sign to the gate and stepped back to admire his handiwork. The black stallion he’d etched into the wood when he was twelve reared up over the capital letters.

“
The Galloping Stallion Equestrian Park
,” Alexander read the words out loud. “
Proprieters: Alexander Altmann and Isidor Finkler
.”

He climbed onto Sari’s back and pointed to a patch of dirt.

“The training arena will be over there,” he said, “and just beyond it,” he paused, pointing to a stretch of grass, “will be the stables.” Alexander closed his eyes and pictured the stalls filled with horses: black, white and burnished bay. And in the very last stall, next to Sari’s, a black stallion with a white blaze between his eyes and four perfect white socks.

Every book has a backstory.
Alexander Altmann A10567
began in 2012 in a lecture hall at the Jewish Holocaust Centre in Melbourne. At the conclusion of the lecture an elderly man raised his hand and asked whether the speaker had ever met a kind German. He wore a short-sleeve shirt; the number the SS had given him a black stain across the white skin of his forearm. He answered before the speaker had a chance to respond. “Because
I
have,” he whispered.

I found him after the lecture and introduced myself. I asked if he wouldn’t mind meeting me the next day. I wanted to hear his story. I’d just finished writing,
The Wrong Boy
, a story about Hanna, a Jewish girl in Auschwitz who befriends the son of the camp commandant. I wanted the boy – Karl – to be nothing like his father. I made him kind and I let him sneak her food. I let them fall in love. I knew it was unlikely that the son of a high-ranking Nazi would defy his father in this way, but I wanted it to be possible.

“I tell my story every day at the Holocaust museum downstairs,” the old man said. “Come see me tomorrow.”

His name was Fred. He’d grown up on a farm and spent his days riding horses, so when the Nazis asked for inmates to work in the SS stables, Fred put up his hand. He joined Auschwitz’s elite Horse Commando and, sometimes when he took the SS officers’ children on pony rides, the men would give him cigarettes which he could trade for food.

“Were
they
the kind Germans you spoke of?” I asked.

He shook his head. “The commander of the platoon drove me to his house to chop wood one morning and left me in the kitchen with his wife. She poured me coffee and fed me cake.” He smiled. “She asked for my name. My name,” he repeated. “She used my name.”

The commander had beaten Fred black and blue. He’d whipped most of the men in the platoon at one time or another, but the man’s wife had fed him cake and given him back his name.

Alexander Altmann A10567
is inspired by the story Fred Steiner told me in the months that followed. Much of what happens to Alexander, happened to Fred. Some of it I made up. Fred has no scars on his palms. He didn’t beat down his feelings or close himself off from the other men in the platoon and he never lost hope.

He was one of the lucky ones. He survived the war and made a new life in Australia. He married a French woman and had three children. He was finally safe, but he didn’t sleep well. The nightmares stopped only when he became a guide at the Holocaust museum and started talking about his experience.

In 1997 Fred Steiner returned to Auschwitz with his son’s class. Beside his name in the visitor’s book, he wrote:
I was here as a slave. Today I’m here with my family and a class of Jewish school children. I have won.

Fred is still telling people about his time in Auschwitz. He continues to work as a guide at the Holocaust museum because it keeps the nightmares at bay and because he knows that talking about the Holocaust is the best way to stop it from happening again.

Having you read this book and learn something of his life, and the Holocaust, is another small win.

SUZY ZAIL
was born in Melbourne, where she studied law and worked as a solicitor. She has written for magazines and newspapers and is the author of award-winning children’s books published in Australia, Canada and the United States. She has written a number of books for adults, including
The Tattooed Flower
, an account of how her father survived the Holocaust.
The Wrong Boy
, her first work of fiction for young adults, was short-listed for Book of the Year in the Older Readers category at the 2013 Children’s Book Council of Australia Awards.

My grateful thanks to Walker Books Australia for allowing me to return to my desk to write another story. And to Maryann Ballantyne for asking the right questions and allowing me the time to find the answers. Thanks also to Mary Verney for her careful copyedit, Sue Whiting for her meticulous proofreading and Sue Hampel for her expert advice.

I’m indebted to my writing group, Ilka Tampke, Michelle Deans, Brooke Maggs, Richard Holt, Carla Fedi and Melinda Dundas for always telling me the truth. And to my husband Shaun, who let me disappear for hours at a time, and our three beautiful children, Josh, Tanya and Remy, for their patience and encouragement.

And finally, to Fred Steiner, for telling me his story and allowing me to re-imagine it.

For Fred Steiner, A10567

“I was hooked from the first page.”

Daily Telegraph

“A gripping read.”

Melbourne Weekly

“Zail, in the mould of authors such as Jackie French and Morris Gleitzman, artfully renders the horrific subject matter poignant for young, curious readers.”

Australian Jewish News

“The Wrong Boy is a rollercoaster ride … Although it hurt to read at times, I could not tear myself away from the page until the story was complete … A must-read for any teenager or adult interested in the past …”

Kids Book Review