This Great Escape Read online

  Andrew Steinmetz

  This Great

  Escape

  The Case of Michael Paryla

  BIBLIOASIS

  Windsor, Ontario

  Copyright © Andrew Steinmetz, 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  FIRST EDITION

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Steinmetz, Andrew

  This Great escape : the case of Michael Paryla / Andrew Steinmetz.

  Electronic monograph in ebook format.

  Issued also in print format.

  ISBN 978-1-927428-34-4

  1. Paryla, Michael, 1935-1967. 2. Paryla, Michael, 1935-1967—In

  motion pictures. 3. Great escape (Motion picture). 4. Actors—Germany

  (West)—Biography. 5. Actors—Canada—Biography. 6. Jewish actors—

  Germany (West)—Biography. 7. Jewish actors—Canada—Biography. I. Title.

  PN2658.P359S74 2013 791.4302’8092 C2013-901998-7

  Edited by Dan Wells

  Copy-edited by Alice Petersen

  Typeset by Chris Andrechek

  Cover Design by Gordon Robertson

  Biblioasis acknowledges the ongoing financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Heritage, the Canada Book Fund; and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Arts Council.

  The story that I am about to tell, a story born in doubt and perplexity,

  has only the misfortune (some call it fortune) of being true.

  —Danilo Kiš

  What the hell kind of great escape is this? No one escapes!

  —Louis B. Mayer

  For Sonya and Emil

  Breakfast between Zurich and Bern

  Michael Paryla, August 1957

  Appell

  Appell is taken early and late. Each day in rows we stand in the compound and are counted. But counting is for children and numbers no great matter. Escape is hidden within. Like death from the living by the miracle of birth. How shall I put it? Escape is like an order from above issued from inside. Searchlights may sweep the forest at night all night, seismographs sunk in the earth may record prisoners digging. Despite it all, Michael, I have compiled the following case history with the pen that hangs on a string like a worm around our necks.

  Escape Construction

  Breakdown of Materials Tom, Dick & Harry (1944) Michael (1967)

  Bed boards 4,000 0

  Bed Covers 192 1

  Beading battens 1,370 0

  Blankets 1,699 1

  Pillow cases 161 2

  Towels 3,424 0

  Chairs 34 0

  Single tables 10 0

  20-man tables 52 0

  Benches 76 0

  Double-tier bunks 90 0

  Knives 1,219 0

  Spoons 478 0

  Shovels 30 0

  Forks 582 0

  Lamps 69 0

  Electric Wire (feet) 1,000 0

  Rope (feet) 600 0

  Bed bolsters 1, 212 0

  Water cans 246 0

  Milk (Glasses of) 0 ½

  Barbiturates (Medicine bottles) 0 1

  Whiskey (750 ml bottle) 0 ½

  Alarm clocks 0 1

  Screenplay

  1963. The Great Escape—The Mirisch Company Inc. Presents

  INT. TRAIN COMPARTMENT—DAY. The door opens and a Gestapo agent enters. He glances at the identity cards offered by a pair of SS officers. Not of interest, not on his list. In total there are 76 escaped prisoners from Stalag Luft III and Hitler has ordered a nationwide manhunt, eine Großfahndung. The Gestapo agent moves forward and then stops when he comes face to face with the actors Richard Attenborough and Gordon Jackson, escaped POWs disguised as businessmen on the train. There is something about them. He studies their papers closely and questions them in German and in French. He hands the props back, and moves past them into the coach ahead.

  The train slows down as it swings into the turn of a steep gradient. At 2:14:34 run time, the Gestapo agent finds the actor David McCallum and flips through his passbook. McCallum is cast as Flight Lieutenant Ashley-Pitt, better known as Dispersal to his POW buddies. (The ensuing brief exchange between the Gestapo agent and Ashley-Pitt does not match James Clavell’s draft screenplay of April 26, 1962; it was improvised or it followed the ‘final’ shooting script, of which there were more than seven in circulation on the set during the making of the movie.)

  Gestapo (standing): Sie reisen für eine Firma?

  Ashley-Pitt (seated): Ja. Für mein Geschäft.

  Gestapo: Danke.

  Ashley-Pitt: Danke.

  Are you traveling for your company? Yes, for my business. Thank you. The Gestapo man exits the coach and the door slides shut behind him, and that’s the last an English audience sees of this actor alive. He’s had perhaps a minute of screen time in one of the most watched war movies of all time, but is not credited for the role, a bit part. Shortly after the film was made he died, aged 32, from a drug overdose in Hamburg. Watched by millions yet completely unknown, eclipsed by Hollywood stars. And there’s a further irony. He was a refugee from Nazi Germany, partly Jewish and the son of one of Austria’s most celebrated left-wing actors, playing a Gestapo agent, a role reprised on thousands of television repeats.

  In fact, watching television is how I came to know of my ‘cousin’ Michael. Alive but not living, stranded in the no-man’s-land of a motion picture. His character is staged and scripted, but I was spellbound nonetheless—Michael was convincing. Fedora and trench coat. Elegant. Blond. His smooth transitions. His lively walk, his coat unbuttoned, his fashion bespoke the casual flair of some fresh-as-the-breeze fascist. This image, I now understand many years later, is counterfeit, a convenient archetype manufactured by the American film director John Sturges and his sidekick Bert Hendrickson in Costume Design and Wardrobe. But it is him, close enough to the real thing. So what to call him? Historicized? Father’s cousin? My first cousin once removed? The family used Michi. As in, Michi broke Mama’s heart.

  Michi’s Diary

  I HOLD IN MY HANDS HIS OLIVE Tagebuch from the summer of 1949, when he was fourteen. He writes from Lahr, from inside a Displaced Persons camp located in the French zone of post-war Germany. Michi in transit with his mother, Eva, and stepfather, Antoine Stehr, bound for Canada. The diary is slim, composed in German. Folded and tucked within the pages—a letter never sent, addressed to Georg, a school friend. There are not many entries, but I have enough work overturning each heavy, capitalized noun in German, and then inspecting the underneath for the imprint of his mind in English. I rel
y on others and the Collins German Dictionary to find his voice.

  20.8.49

  This great trip began one week ago. Everything went head over heels. We had to leave Mainz in two days. Now we are sitting in Lahr. I am in a refugee camp for the first time. We have to wait here until we can go to Naples.

  21.8.49

  Today is Sunday. I have received a pair of shoes with crepe soles. I wore them for the first time today. They are my first shoes with crepe soles. Tonight there is a dance at the YMCA. Maybe we will go.

  22.8.49

  There was a dance on Sunday and today. But we went only on Sunday. Instead, we wanted to go bathing. It was a nice walk to the lake. On the way back we passed Lahr’s water purification plant. The man explained everything to us. In the field we saw a mole. It was the first time I had seen a mole roaming free. When we returned to camp everything was closed. The dance was stopped. We soon learned that diphtheria had broken out in the camp. Now we have to wait for developments. We will probably have to stay here longer.

  23.8.49

  Bad things are happening to us. If the cultures are good USA and Australia will go tomorrow. But for Canada we still know nothing. Many rumours are circulating that we have to stay here until mid-September. But I do not believe this. The food in the camp is awful. Every noon: potatoes with noodles. Every evening: pea or bean soup.

  24.8.49

  Another child is sick today. We are locked up for longer. The transports are not going yet.

  27.8.49

  I have written nothing for two days. But nothing worth saying happened in these days. Tomorrow the gate will be opened again. USA and Australia leave next week. At least that is what is being said. But there is no information about Canada. Today we had spinach for lunch. That was quite amazing. Yesterday I had to help with the cleaning. That is why it tasted so good.

  29.8.49

  The stupidest of stupid things is that I cannot go bathing because of my hand. But the doctor said it will be alright by tomorrow or the next day. Then there will be a celebration.

  3.9.49

  Again I have not written for two days. But that is not terrible. Nothing happens here. Yesterday we were registered. We are supposed to get going next week. I hope that this is true. It is not very nice to sit here in Lahr for so long. My hand is good again. I have been bathing. Today I may go again.

  7.9.49

  Today Australia went. We were at the train station as the train left. My friend also left. Things are now also certain for us. We go on the 14th, and in fact we are leaving with USA to Bremen. This is good.

  8.9.49

  The days are very boring. I do not have a friend anymore. They are all gone. I find life in the camp increasingly worse and unbearable because mother’s nerves are not so strong and I get yelled at a lot.

  11.9.49

  I made myself a ping-pong net and play a lot of ping-pong. I can do it quite well; but I want to get a lot better.

  17.9.49

  On the 14th we left Lahr. On the 15th we were in Bremen. On the 22nd we go further. Here in Bremen the camp is first class. Everything goes quickly and clean.

  Young master Michi is a gentleman by the sounds of it. At fourteen, his passport is stamped “Displaced Person of Undetermined Nationality”. You might ask, how did he get himself into such a diplomatic mess? A bit of history.

  Michael Paryla was born in Vienna on November 27, 1935. His parents had fled Germany to Austria in 1933, immediately following the Reichstag Fire, to save their skins. They both were actors. His father, Karl Paryla, was Austrian but earned his first important engagement at the Reinhardt Theatre in Darmstadt. Karl was politically active, a communist, and had married Michael’s mother, Eva, against the wishes of his family. Eva was a Mischling. Raised Lutheran, she had a Jewish background.1 When she was a teenager, Eva had a small role playing a prostitute in the first touring production of Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera. Her acting teacher, in Breslau, had been a young Max Ophüls, a German-born film director who later made films in France and Hollywood.

  After the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany, in March 1938, the family fled Vienna for Zurich. Michael was three years old.2 In Zurich, his father’s theatre and political connections helped the family avoid detention in a Swiss Displaced Persons camp. But soon after arrival, his parents separated. Michael stayed in an apartment with his mother and attended a Waldorf school, where Rudolf Steiner’s mystical philosophy of anthroposophy would form the backbone of his early childhood education. Toward the end of the war, Eva volunteered with the Red Cross, helping to plan a massive relief effort in aid of post-war refugees. Michael’s father, meanwhile, pursued his acting career. Karl Paryla made his mark in the World Premiere of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children (1942) and Life of Galileo (1943) at the Zurich Schaulspielhaus, one of the most important theatres in the German-speaking world.

  In 1946, Michael, aged eleven, accompanied his mother and his stepfather on a train journey back to Germany. They settled in the Russian Zone of post-war Berlin. His stepfather, Antoine Stehr, also had political connections on the left. His mother found work as a broadcaster at Radio Berlin. The family had difficulty surviving the cruel post-war conditions. The city was in ruins. There were cold winters and food shortages. New arrivals, the family made do with ration cards and goods from the black market.

  In her book Tearing the Silence: On Being German in America, the German-born American writer Ursula Hegi observes that parents of her generation were silent about the war and the Holocaust. Intentionally or not, they implicated their own children in that silence. Her parents’ generation, Hegi writes, “tried to create for their children eine heile Welt—an intact world”. How different was Eva’s approach and her decision to leave Zurich for Berlin after the end of the war with an eleven-year-old boy. As an inhabitant of Soviet East Berlin, Michael grew up with evidence of the Allied air raids all around him. He was not at all presented with eine heile Welt. He was presented a jigsaw puzzle. Berlin itself was in quarters: Russian, French, British, and American.

  It was with a sense of obligation that Eva and Antoine had returned to Germany. They embraced the reconstruction and the declaration of a new beginning. Eva, many years later, explained her decision in context of a civilian mission: it was her obligation and duty as a citizen, who, importantly, had not spent the wars years in Germany—i.e. as someone who had not been poisoned or corrupted by the Nazis, having lived in exile since 1935—to help rebuild the country. Eva’s kind had not rotted under the Third Reich. So it was idealism and pride that motivated Michael’s parents to take up residence in black-market-dominated post-war Berlin. The buildings and the infrastructure had been destroyed, the morale rubbed out in the dust. Crime was rampant. Berlin’s grey citizens eked out an animal existence. During the harsh winter of 1947, it’s been recorded that wolves from the surrounding forest entered the city to forage for food. Posters went up on walls warning people of wolf attacks.

  Under these circumstances the family adopted Romeo, a German shepherd. Where did they find Romeo? Not from the Humane Society, certainly. Making room for a pet in their lives seems more than a bit indulgent, but then a German shepherd could have come in handy in those conditions, as security in the wild west of post-war Berlin.

  In July of 1948, shortly after the Allied sectors had been put in a stranglehold by the Soviets, the family and family dog were airlifted to West Germany from embargoed Berlin, via Gatow, an air base under the British Command.3 They touched down in Baden-Baden. By the next summer, the family was moved to a refugee camp in Lahr, on the western edge of the Black Forest. Here, a diphtheria outbreak threatened the family’s chances of emigration.

  In his letter dated September 9, 1949, an exuberant Michael Paryla, on the verge of immigration to Canada, writes to a friend:

  Dear Georg!

  I
have a lot to tell you. You will be surprised that I am in Lahr. This is how it happened. In the summer of 1948 I travelled to my father in Vienna. While I was there, my parents received their exit permits to leave to West Germany. I could not get out of Vienna quickly. My parents were in Mainz. But everything went broke in Mainz. My parents could not earn enough. Shortly before Christmas, I also came to Mainz. Maybe you heard about this from Anja, if you still have contact with this young lady. This summer I wanted to come to Switzerland, to visit my first teacher in Zurich. That would have been nice. But as usual something unforeseen happened. Of course, our exit visa, on which we had been counting for one year, and in which we no longer believed, arrived out of the blue. We have been sitting here in a camp in Lahr for three weeks. This is not at all nice. But on Wednesday we are finally leaving for Canada.

  Now be well. Greetings to you, your parents and grandmother. Your Michi.

  The forwarding address he gives is 262 York Street, Ottawa, CANADA, printed all capitals.

  1 ‘Jewish background’: it won’t be the last time I use this phrase and I’d like to clarify what it means to our family with a genealogical note, but it seems early for that, especially since full disclosure entails relaying information that came to be known by some very recent genealogical research. Michael, maybe even his mother Eva, would have been unaware of certain of these facts: you see this is the thing about German families with Jewish backgrounds, there is often a lot of background to the background, which gets in the way and becomes a foreground screen. For now may it suffice to say that this is my background, too: baptised Protestant and raised in a secular family, on my father’s side there are Jewish roots and a German past. My mother’s side is Swedish.