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The Jew That the Gestapo Wanted to Hire
The story of a Jewish man who managed to hide his decent in order to survive
Before World War II, 170,000 Jews lived in Vienna. In 1945, only 6,000 remained in the city. One of the few lucky ones to escape the Nazis was Freddie Knoller. He survived an interrogation by the Gestapo, Auschwitz and a death march at temperatures below 0 degrees. Freddie just like many others in his predicament knew that the only way to fight was to survive.
In 1938, Freddie had to leave his home town of Viena due to the new dictatorship settled in by Benito Mussolini, therefore he moved with his parents to Austria. When Austria was overtaken by the Germans, his parents sent Freddie to some friends from Belgium thinking that it would be a much safer place. In 1940 when he tried to migrate to France, he was captured by the border patrol and imprisoned in a French camp. After the Nazi occupation of France, he managed to escape.
In 1943 when Freddie was only 22 years of age, he managed to get false documents in order to pass the border of occupied France (as a German citizen) and find work in Paris. One day he was randomly arrested by the Gestapo (Nazi Police) and took in for interrogation. Freddie describes the interaction room to be quite grim, a big room with a portrait of Hitler that was covering…
