The Auschwitz Escape

  His eyes began to fill with tears as he thought of the woman who had loved him so much and had given her own life that he might live. He struggled to see her face in his mind’s eye. It was already beginning to fade, and it grieved him greatly that hers was a face he would never see again.

  44

  APRIL 24, 1943

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Cordell Hull had never even dreamed of being secretary of state.

  Born into a farming family in a log cabin in Pickett County, Tennessee, Hull was just glad to get a solid education. He became a lawyer, then a judge, and then—prodded by family friends—ran for the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1893. A friendly man with a quick mind and natural talent, he was encouraged to run for Congress in 1907, and he won. For the next twenty-four years, he represented the Fourth District, even serving a stint as the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, before running for the U.S. Senate in the fall of 1930 and taking office the following January. His Senate career was short-lived, however, for in March of 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt tapped Hull to run the State Department.

  What few knew was that Hull’s wife, Rose, was part Jewish. It was not a fact Hull wanted publicized. Indeed, he went to some lengths to keep it quiet. But as one of Hull’s closest advisors, William Barrett knew, which was why he pulled Hull aside this particular afternoon with news.

  “Mr. Secretary, we have a new development you need to be aware of,” Barrett explained when they were behind the closed doors of the small conference room off of the secretary’s main office.

  “What is it, Bill?”

  “We’re hearing reports of an uprising in Warsaw, sir. It started a few days ago.”

  “What kind of uprising?”

  “Apparently the Jewish resistance movement inside the Warsaw ghetto have gotten their hands on some light arms and Molotov cocktails. We’re hearing reports that they’ve launched attacks against German soldiers.”

  “How many people are we talking about?” the secretary asked.

  “We’re not certain, sir. It’s not clear exactly how many Jews are left in the ghetto. Originally there were over 400,000, but most of them have died either due to the appalling conditions or else been shipped to concentration camps. There may be as few as 60,000 there now. We don’t know how many of those who are left are involved in the uprising, but the Germans are moving hard and fast to crush them. We’re hearing reports of many casualties. One of the Jewish leaders there has committed suicide. There’s a news report of the suicide note he left. I thought you’d want to see it.”

  Barrett handed a cable to the secretary, who read it aloud.

  “‘I cannot continue to live and to be silent while the remnants of Polish Jewry, whose representative I am, are being murdered. My comrades in the Warsaw ghetto fell with arms in their hands in the last heroic battle. I was not permitted to fall like them, together with them, but I belong with them, to their mass grave. By my death, I wish to give expression to my most profound protest against the inaction in which the world watches and permits the destruction of the Jewish people.’”

  Hull handed back the cable. “So? What am I supposed to do with this?”

  “With Passover beginning this week, a number of Jewish leaders want to meet with you.”

  “What for?”

  “They want you to let more European Jews come here for asylum,” Barrett said. “They say we haven’t allowed enough Jews to enter the U.S. since Hitler invaded Poland. They say we’ve admitted less than 10 percent of the quota allowed by law. They want us to do more.”

  “Fine, set up the meeting,” Hull said. “But make it clear to them: I cannot set policy. We’re doing all we can.”

  45

  APRIL 25, 1943

  AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU CONCENTRATION CAMP

  Growing up in Berlin, Jacob had never needed an alarm clock.

  Not to get up and off to school on weekdays. Not to get up and off to the synagogue on Saturdays. In the mountains at Uncle Avi’s cabin, if he was told they needed to be out of bed by five or five thirty to go hunting, Jacob had the uncanny ability to wake up exactly on time. He couldn’t explain how he did it. He just could.

  On this particular day, Jacob awoke precisely at four thirty, as he had for the past several days, by force of a newly acquired habit. Yet for some reason, on this day the gong did not sound. No one else in his room or anywhere on the block stirred. Most of the men around him, his bunkmate included, were still snoring. It was still pitch-black outside, and Jacob didn’t hear any movement. Gerhard Gruder, their block senior, was nowhere to be found. Nor did Jacob hear the guards in jackboots patrolling the streets around them.

  Lying perfectly still, he listened for any sound at all that might give him a clue as to what was happening. But the camp seemed strangely devoid of human activity. An unusually strong wind was bearing down from the north, rattling windows and doors and howling as it found cracks and fissures throughout the building. Thunder, too, rumbled in the distance, but that was all.

  A few minutes later his bunkmate sat bolt upright, a look of fear on his face. He scanned the room and saw everyone else sleeping, then turned and saw that Jacob was awake.

  “What’s happening?” the young man whispered. “Isn’t it time to get up?”

  “Yes, it is,” Jacob said, also keeping his voice low.

  “Didn’t the gong go off?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “I just had a dream that I was back at university,” said the young man, who had broken out in a cold sweat. “I was late for class, and they hanged me.”

  “It was just a dream,” Jacob said. “I think we’re okay.”

  “You think?”

  “Believe me,” Jacob said, “no one’s up—the camp’s not moving.”

  “Something’s wrong,” the young man said. “Maybe we should get up.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “What if we’re wrong? What if we’re all late? They’ll kill us all.”

  “I’m not getting up,” Jacob said.

  “We have to,” his bunkmate replied.

  “Maybe you have to,” Jacob said. “But I don’t have to. I’m going to stay here until Gruder shows up.”

  “What if Gruder is dead?”

  “Then there really is a God in heaven.”

  “Don’t be funny.”

  “You think I’m being funny?”

  “Just get up and check things out.”

  Jacob shook his head. “I’m not getting up. You get up.”

  “You have friends here. They won’t shoot you.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jacob asked, taken aback.

  “I know you’re getting extra food,” the young man said. “I don’t know where or how, but you’ve obviously made friends somewhere.”

  Jacob grew nervous. How did this kid know about his business? Was he spying on him? How else could he know?

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he lied. “But I’m not going out there.”

  Both were quiet for a few moments, and then the young man leaned toward Jacob and whispered again.

  “My name’s Josef,” he said. “Josef Starwolski.”

  “I’m Leonard Eliezer,” Jacob lied, not daring to lower his guard to anyone outside of Canada. “You can call me Len.”

  “Sorry I didn’t introduce myself before now,” Josef said. “I was too scared to talk to anyone.”

  “Me, too. Where are you from?”

  “Kraków. And you?”

  “Brussels,” Jacob lied again.

  “I work in the records office,” Josef said. “They needed someone who could type and file and translate from Polish to German. Somehow they found me.”

  “And how is it?”

  “Could be worse. I work right down the hall from Hoess and Von Strassen, so I think I’m developing an ulcer already. But there are some pretty girls in the of
fice. Actually, everyone there besides me is a girl, so that’s not terrible. How about you?”

  “I work in Canada.”

  “The warehouse?”

  Jacob nodded.

  “What do you do?” Josef asked.

  “Nothing important,” Jacob said, not wanting to talk about himself. “It’s pretty boring. But at least it’s inside.”

  “Yeah, that’s good,” Josef agreed. “So how old are you?”

  “Twenty-one. And you?”

  “I turn twenty today,” Josef whispered back.

  “Oh . . . well . . . congratulations,” Jacob said, not sure what else to say. “Happy birthday, I guess.”

  “What’s happy about it?” Josef asked.

  46

  When the sun finally came up, Jacob learned why Sunday was different.

  Apparently, even Nazi murderers needed a day off.

  To his astonishment, Jacob learned that meant most prisoners had the day off too, except for those baking bread and those performing a handful of other jobs deemed essential by Hoess for the “good order” of the camp. The ovens in the crematorium never seemed to stop, for instance, so the Sonderkommandos kept working in twelve-hour shifts around the clock. Most of the rest of the prisoners, however, could roam about freely, talk to whomever they wanted, write letters, play cards, or just sleep in. Certainly there were enough guards to prevent a riot or a breakout. But Jacob noticed that many of the guards and camp officers got rip-roaring drunk, mostly on cases of vodka that Leszek happily provided them from the storehouses of Canada.

  This particular Sunday—April 25, 1943—was no ordinary Sunday. It was Easter, and to Jacob’s astonishment, he watched as no small number of guards and officers and block seniors went to church. In fact, at just before ten that morning, while he and Max were out for a long walk, Jacob was flabbergasted to see Gerhard Gruder, Fat Louie, and several others heading to the camp chapel, dressed in their Sunday finest. Soon he could actually hear an organ playing and their torturers singing hymns and reading Scriptures and then ringing the bells when the service was over.

  Who were these people? What God were they praying to? How could they beat and slaughter and burn human beings six days a week and then read the Bible and pray on Sundays? Though Jacob hadn’t been raised religious, he certainly hadn’t been raised to hate religious people either. He’d always thought of himself as tolerant not only of Orthodox Jews but also of Catholic and Protestant Christians. He’d been taught to respect every man and every faith, but how could he do so now? If this was what it meant to be a Christian, Jacob hoped all Christians would rot in hell, and the sooner the better.

  “Come on,” Max said. “Let’s go see my sister.”

  Jacob did a double take. “Your sister?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You have a sister?”

  “Of course.”

  “I didn’t know you had a sister.”

  “Well, I do.”

  “And she’s here?”

  “No, she’s having tea with the king of England,” Max retorted. “Of course she’s here. She works at the medical clinic.”

  “How come you never mentioned her?”

  “Haven’t I?” Max asked, now walking more briskly. “I thought I had.”

  “No, not once,” Jacob said, picking up his pace to keep up with his new friend.

  “I must have,” Max said.

  “You didn’t,” Jacob said. “You talk about everything. You never shut up. And now it turns out you have family here, and you never said a thing.”

  Max shrugged. “What can I say? I have a sister. Her name is Abigail. We call her Abby.”

  Two minutes later they were just about to enter the clinic when Leszek came up from behind them and grabbed them both by the arm.

  “Come with me,” he said under his breath.

  “Why—what’s the matter?” Max asked, startled but compliant.

  “Just keep your mouths shut and come with me.”

  Jacob and Max did as they were told, and soon they were entering the timber yard and zigzagging their way through huge piles of wood until they came upon two men who were smoking cigarettes.

  “Otto, Abe, meet Max and Jacob,” Leszek said.

  Jacob and Max shook hands with the men, both of whom appeared to be in their early twenties. As they did, Leszek began talking very quickly and quietly.

  He explained that Max and Jacob were his assistants in Canada and told what they did and where they were from. He gave a brief background on Jacob’s uncle and his prominent role in the Resistance. He explained the circumstances by which Jacob had arrived in Auschwitz. Then he explained why it was best to call Jacob by the name Leonard Eliezer in public.

  Leszek then told Jacob and Max that Otto’s last name was Steinberger and that he was a Czechoslovakian Jew. Abe’s full name was Abraham Irving Frenkel; he, too, was from Czechoslovakia. Leszek said Otto had for a long time worked in the Canada command but now was a registrar for Block 14.

  “His job is to record the daily roll call, keep careful statistics on which prisoners have died and what their numbers are, keep detailed notes and records for his block senior on the activities of each man, and basically run errands for the senior, as needed. As long as he keeps his ledger under his arm and a worried frown on his face, he’s free to go anywhere in the camp he needs or wants to go. That’s critical for us.”

  Abe was a registrar as well, but he was about to be moved to Camp D in Birkenau, the vastly larger Auschwitz expansion camp a few kilometers away. There, Leszek said, the Nazis were building much larger barracks but also much larger gas chambers and crematoriums.

  “Hoess is planning something,” Leszek said. “Abe here is going to help us figure out what.”

  As Leszek spoke, Jacob found himself sizing up these two men. Otto Steinberger was ruggedly good-looking with intense but friendly dark-brown eyes and a strong jaw. He looked to be healthy and in better physical shape than most, suggesting he had probably arrived fairly recently. In some initial and superficial ways, Otto reminded Jacob of Uncle Avi. There was something about him that suggested he loved the outdoors and was a man with street smarts and a penchant for action.

  Abe Frenkel, meanwhile, bore an uncanny resemblance to a professor at Frederick William University in Berlin who was a dear friend of Jacob’s father. The man hadn’t said a word yet, but he looked like a lover of words and ideas. He had an angular nose and bright, gentle brown eyes. Jacob could picture him wearing a tweed suit and smoking a pipe with cherry tobacco while sitting in his office at some European college of philosophy, holding office hours and discussing the finer points of Kant and Hegel. He, too, seemed surprisingly healthy, and Jacob surmised he was a relatively recent arrival as well.

  That Otto Steinberger and Abe Frenkel were Jews hardly needed to be stated. It was apparent by the yellow triangles on their striped uniforms. Yet Jacob sensed that Leszek was trying to say as concisely as possible that the four of them were on the same team, of the same heritage—that they could trust each other, and that perhaps they would need to. What was not immediately apparent was why exactly Leszek was implying any of this. Why had they been brought together in such a rushed and unplanned manner? This was another matter altogether. Jacob assumed that he would learn the answer soon enough.

  “When did you two get here?” Otto asked in a whisper.

  Max took several minutes to tell his story.

  When he was finished, Jacob simply said, “Thursday.”

  “You just got here on Thursday?” Otto asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Jacob replied.

  “How about you both?” Max asked.

  Jacob was stunned when Otto said he had been there since the summer of 1942.

  “And I arrived on April 13, 1942,” Frenkel whispered. “I was part of a group of a thousand Jews. We were all from Slovakia. I’m one of the few still around.”

  Frenkel finished one cigarette and lit up another. “There were only fifteen
thousand prisoners when I got here,” he said, looking off into the distance. “Now look at the place. They just keep coming.”

  “And dying,” Steinberger said.

  It was an odd meeting. Jacob had no idea why they were talking.

  And then it was over.

  47

  “What was that all about?” Jacob asked Max at lunch.

  “I have no idea,” Max said, staring into his soup but hardly touching it.

  “Have you ever seen those two before?”

  “Never.”

  “Then what was the point?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “You’ve known Leszek a lot longer than me.”

  “He’s still a mystery to me.”

  “Well, what did he mean when he said things like Otto’s job is ‘critical for us’?” Jacob pressed. “What did he mean when he said that when Abe is transferred to Birkenau, he is going to ‘help us’ figure out what the Nazis are doing with such a huge expansion? Who is ‘us’? What’s he talking about?”

  “I don’t know,” Max said.

  “You must,” Jacob said, not buying his obfuscation for a second.

  “Well, I don’t,” Max shot back, careful to keep his voice down. “I have a guess, but I don’t really know.”

  “What’s your guess?”

  “We can’t talk about it here.”

  “Then finish your soup,” Jacob said, “and let’s go someplace where you can tell me what you know.”

  Thunder boomed overhead, and soon the skies opened and it was pouring.

  “Follow me,” Max said, and he set off sprinting once again toward the medical clinic.

  At first Jacob was hesitant to run. He’d seen what happened to prisoners who made the guards think they were trying to escape. But as the rain intensified, everyone began running for cover, guards and prisoners alike.