– – –
The hours could not pass by fast enough.
Jacob got back to his barracks and continued to carry out his normal routine.
He learned from a kapo that a forty-five-year-old French Jew had just dropped dead on a work detail at the Buna camp. He also learned that a thirty-eight-year-old Polish political prisoner had been beaten to death by two guards.
Jacob wasn’t sure how much more he could handle. In March, twenty-nine prisoners in his barracks had died. In February, thirty-six had died, adding to the fifty-one who had died in January. Typhus. Dysentery. Starvation. The elements. Beatings. Exhaustion. The Nazis didn’t even need Zyklon B. They had no shortage of methods to kill a man.
Jacob finished his daily reports and filed the paperwork with the records office. Then, in his only departure from his regular schedule, he made a brief stop at the bakery to assure Luc that all was well. All the while he felt like a time bomb was about to go off.
And then it did. Jacob was dutifully standing at attention with all the other men from his barracks at the seven o’clock roll call when the sirens went off and sent a shudder down his spine. Von Strassen had run a few drills in recent months to make sure the new emergency response procedures for escape attempts were being followed precisely, and most of the men around him assumed this was another test. Jacob, however, knew differently, though he did not tip his hand even as he marveled at the sight of literally thousands of heavily armed troops pouring out of their bunkers and taking up their preplanned positions or forming into their squads and moving outside the camp to begin their search.
The hunt was on. The clock was ticking. Jacob just hoped he could endure the suspense.
Due to his indoor work at the bakery and all the food he had eaten there and now his job as a registrar and the generous extra rations of food that Steinberger and Frenkel had made sure he received every day, Jacob was physically stronger and much healthier than he had been during his months at Buna or out in the vegetable fields. He was therefore much better prepared this time for the nine hours of standing outside in the rain that all the prisoners had to endure. Still, he knew the men around him were weaker than they had been a few weeks or months earlier, and it grieved him to see them drop one by one throughout the evening.
He told himself over and over again that this was a cost that could not be avoided. If they were going to save the many, they had to be prepared to lose a few. He had told himself that numerous times before this night, but as he watched grown men weeping and collapsing and being beaten and shot, Jacob could hardly bear it.
The men were released just before sunrise, but the manhunt continued. For three days and three nights it continued, just as Jacob expected. But on the evening of April 9 something happened that he did not expect.
Jacob was walking back to his barracks after supper when he heard a low but distinctive rumbling to the west. It was a sound he had heard before, though never here. It sounded like a plane. Actually, it sounded like several planes.
Jacob turned and searched the sky. Just then, the clouds parted for a moment. To his astonishment he could see a squadron of Allied planes dropping dozens of bombs.
The planes were not immediately overhead but were several kilometers to the southwest, so the bombs weren’t coming straight down on top of them, and Jacob wasn’t in immediate danger.
But it didn’t matter where the bombs were falling. Fear was the furthest thing from what he was experiencing at that moment. Rather, he felt a combination of shock and sheer joy. It had happened! They had waited for month after month, but it had finally happened! Leszek and his team had broken through enemy lines after all! Their friend had told the Allied generals what crimes the Nazis were committing at Auschwitz, and the Americans and the Brits had finally come to make it stop.
Soon prisoners of all ages were pouring out of the dining hall and out of their barracks and out of the washrooms, yelling and cheering as the bombs hit their marks. The ground shook as massive fireballs could be seen in the distance and thick black smoke rushed into the dusky sky.
But then, even before the camp guards began blowing their whistles and the men in the towers began firing their machine guns into the air and additional soldiers ran to their artillery batteries and began unleashing triple-A fire into the sky, the Allied planes were suddenly gone. The ordnance stopped falling. The ground stopped shaking, and soon all was silent save the roaring of the fires at the I. G. Farben factory.
A second roll call was taken, and only when Von Strassen and his men were certain that only Steinberger and Frenkel were missing—that no one else had escaped during the bombing raid—were the men ordered back to their barracks. It was not yet even eight o’clock. The night was still young, but the guards were taking no chances.
– – –
After seventy-two tense hours, the manhunt was finally called off.
Then the inevitable interrogations ensued. Men working directly for Otto and Abe were tortured and then hanged. But miraculously the trail never led to Jacob or Luc or Josef or Abby or anyone on their team. The system they had created was diffused enough that Von Strassen wasn’t able to find a single loose thread to pull on, and within ten days or so, a sense of relative calm had returned to the camp, but for the daily systematic murder of thousands of Jews.
When the coast seemed clear, Jacob and Luc huddled in the back room of the bakery one morning, hardly able to believe their good fortune. They were still alive. Steinberger and Frenkel were safely out of the camp, en route to Czechoslovakia and then Hungary. Fischer and Kopecký had their own plans and were ready to move whenever the proper moment presented itself.
The only immediate disappointment—and indeed, source of tremendous confusion—was trying to understand why the Allied bombing run had been directed only at the synthetic rubber plant and not at the railroad tracks or at Auschwitz or Birkenau or any of the subcamps. Why had the Allies chosen to penetrate so deep into enemy airspace only to hit a not-yet-fully-completed rubber factory rather than a death factory? Hadn’t Leszek explained everything to them?
Something was terribly wrong.
Maybe this was just a test run, Jacob told Luc one night. Maybe the bombers were coming back. After all, even though the Germans had positioned antiaircraft batteries in the area, the Allies could see that the men using them weren’t really well-trained. The Allied bombers hadn’t encountered any serious resistance, so far as Jacob or Luc or any of their sources throughout the camps could determine. There was no reason, therefore, for London and Washington or even Moscow not to order further air strikes, so every prisoner fully expected more to come.
Yet another week went by and nothing happened.
Two more weeks went by and no more bombers.
Then it was May, and there were still no follow-up bombing runs. Not even the sound of planes in the air.
70
MAY 14, 1944
“What if we’re wrong?” Jacob asked.
He and Luc rarely spent significant amounts of time together anymore. They didn’t want to run the risk of being seen together. Thus, their meetings were usually quick and to the point and all about business. They gave each other brief updates and scraps of intelligence they had picked up and made plans for their next meeting.
But today was different. It was a Sunday, and it was quiet, and the weather was beautiful, and thousands of prisoners were outside. Some were walking. Some were playing checkers in the dust with rocks. Others were reading alone or flirting with the women or taking a nap. Sundays were a surreal break from the grisly routine of the death camp, and each man savored them in his own way.
So today Jacob and Luc went for a walk amid the other prisoners.
“We’ve been assuming that Leszek finally made it to the Resistance alive and in one piece and that the bombing was a response to his report,” Jacob noted as they strolled.
“So?” Luc asked.
“So what if we’re wrong about that? What if L
eszek is dead? What if the Allies have no idea what’s happening here and it was—I don’t know—just a fluke that they hit a target so close to us?”
“A fluke?” Luc asked. “You think Eisenhower would send bombers deep behind enemy lines for fun?”
“No, no, that’s not what I’m saying at all,” Jacob said. “Obviously it was a specific target. Obviously there was a plan. I’m just saying we’ve been assuming it was a trial run for a larger bombing campaign either against the rail lines into Auschwitz, to cut off the trains bringing more people here, or a test run for actually bombing the main camps and especially the gas chambers and the crematoriums. But what if it wasn’t? What if the target was the factory, and they got it, or thought they did, and that’s that?”
“It certainly looks like that’s the case, doesn’t it?” Luc said. “It’s been more than a month since Otto and Abe escaped, and there’s still no rescue. I think we need to get word to Judah and Milos. It’s time for them to move.”
Jacob agreed. They discussed how best to contact the men, who lived in a different section of the camp. They deemed it best to send a message through Abby, via Josef. It was important that Jacob and Luc keep their distance, lest both teams be identified and rounded up by Von Strassen before either team could make their move.
Two days later, however, events took another turn for the worse. Luc received a coded message from Abby, which he immediately showed to Jacob. She said she had learned the Nazis were beginning the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. Hundreds of thousands were coming, and coming soon.
Jacob couldn’t believe it. Until now, his and Luc’s intelligence had said that the Hungarian Jews would start being moved in the summer—June at the earliest but more likely July. Now, however, if Abby’s intel was correct, the calculus had drastically changed. It was only May. The Jews of Hungary were about to be shipped to their deaths earlier than anyone in the underground had expected.
Jacob and Luc sent another message to Fischer and Kopecký, informing them of the news and urging them to leave immediately.
Within days the trains from Hungary, filled with Jewish families, began arriving. They did not go to the original Auschwitz camp. They went straight into Birkenau, and day after day, Jacob and Luc watched thousands of men, women, and children step off the trains, leaving their luggage and personal possessions behind, and march straight into the gas chambers. There was no longer a selection process. No one went to the right. Everyone went to the left. Everyone was being exterminated.
Jacob was distraught. What had happened to Leszek? And what had happened to Steinberger and Frenkel? Had they, too, been captured and killed? If so, why hadn’t word gotten back to them? Why weren’t Hoess and Von Strassen flaunting the news in front of their prisoners? Yet if their two friends had truly escaped successfully, hadn’t they gotten back to their homeland of Czechoslovakia? Hadn’t they warned the Jewish council? Hadn’t word been sent to the chief rabbi in Budapest? If so, why were all these Jews coming so silently and compliantly, like sheep to the slaughter?
Then, on May 27, the sirens went off again. The troops and dogs were deployed again. The manhunt began all over again. Judah Fischer and Milos Kopecký were finally on the run.
On June 1, when the manhunt was over, Jacob gambled with his own life and with Luc’s. Rather than avoid contact like they had agreed, Jacob decided he absolutely had to see Luc. So he ducked into the bakery that afternoon and pulled Luc into the back room.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Luc said, his face pale. “We agreed not to see each other for ten days. It’s only been five. It’s too soon. If they catch us, they’ll kill us.”
“We cannot wait any longer,” Jacob replied. “We need to move now.”
“That’s crazy,” Luc said. “We need to stick to our plan, and you need to get out of here immediately.”
Jacob glanced over his shoulder to make sure the workroom door was still closed and that the Czechs in the kitchen couldn’t hear them. Then he turned back to the French pastor and pressed his case.
“Listen to me, Luc,” he whispered. “We’re out of time. Every day more and more Jews arrive from Hungary. Every day more and more of them are gassed and thrown into the ovens. What are we going to do? Wait another month? Hope against hope that Otto and Abe are still alive and the Allies are coming? Hope against hope that Judah and Milos won’t be caught and will be able to do what Leszek couldn’t do, what no one seems to have done yet—actually get word to the Hungarian Jews and convince them not to get on those trains? We can’t wait. We need to get out now, while Von Strassen and his men are still trying to figure out what’s just happened and before they do something to change their security procedures and make it impossible for us to escape.”
“No, Jacob—we have a plan, and now we have to follow it,” Luc said. “We are not free agents. We are men under orders. Our commanders have a plan. It’s our job to follow it to the letter, not second-guess them.”
But Jacob adamantly disagreed. “History will never forgive us if we don’t move now.” Jacob was scarcely able to believe how much he had changed in recent months, how full of conviction he had become and how willing to argue his case so forcefully. “I, for one, will never forgive myself. I’m not saying we’ll get out alive. And even if we do, I’m not saying we’ll make it to Žilina, much less to London or Washington. I’m not saying if we do get there, we’ll succeed in persuading anyone as to the atrocities that are really happening here. Maybe the Jewish council in Hungary will listen; maybe they won’t. Maybe your grandfather will believe us and help us persuade Roosevelt; maybe he won’t. But we have to try. We can’t just sit on our hands and be passive. We have to move. We have to act. We have to do whatever we can to save these Jews. Events have been set into motion that cannot be undone. The liquidation of Hungarian Jews is happening as we speak. A month from now, it could all be over. That’s half a million Jews or more. And then what will we say? What will we say if Hitler kills another half-million Jews and you and I just sat here saying, ‘We have a plan; we have to stick to it’?”
Luc stood and began pacing the room. “I need more time,” he said. “I need to pray about it. Give me another few days.”
“No,” Jacob said emphatically. “You must give me an answer now. Or tomorrow I leave alone.”
“You can’t do that,” Luc said, showing a flash of anger for the first time since Jacob had met him. “We have a deal.”
“The deal has changed. If you don’t come, I’ll bring Josef or Abby.”
“You can’t wait another two or three days?”
“That’s another four or five thousand dead Jews, minimum,” Jacob said. “Besides, I just heard something very disturbing from Josef.”
“What?”
“The workers have almost finished another row of barracks in Birkenau-III. By the end of the week, they’ll be starting the last row, which means they’ll start using the lumber pile where our hideout is. If we don’t go tomorrow, we may not have a way out.”
The two men stared at each other for several tense moments before Luc finally conceded that his younger partner was right. They had no choice.
“Okay, I’m with you,” he said at last. “You’re right. We can leave tomorrow. I’ll be ready if you are. Can you put the backpack in the woodpile this afternoon?”
Jacob considered that. “I don’t know. There are a lot of guards out there now. But I’ll try. Either way, I’ll see you tomorrow at two o’clock sharp. Don’t be late.”
71
JUNE 1, 1944
Jacob stood outside the medical clinic.
He was too nervous to enter. He had come to say thank you and good-bye to Abigail Cohen. In his heart, he wanted to say more than that, but he didn’t see how. Though he was still loath to admit it to anyone, he had developed feelings for her, feelings deeper than those he’d secretly harbored for Naomi Silver back in Siegen for so many years. That was merely a schoolboy crush, he knew. This was something
else. But there was nothing he could do about such feelings. He didn’t really understand them. The fact was, he was embarrassed to have them.
In twenty-four hours he would be gone—or dead. He couldn’t take Abby with him. Likely he would never see her again, even if the Allies did come to liberate the camps rather than bomb them.
Jacob could read the handwriting on the wall. He knew the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau was a long shot at best. It was possible, therefore—indeed, perhaps even likely—that Abigail Cohen would not live to see the end of 1944.
The more such thoughts rushed through his mind, the more uncomfortable he felt about going inside. But he couldn’t simply stand outside, staring at the front door. It wasn’t safe, and he still had so much else to do.
The moment he entered, he knew it had been a mistake to come. His mouth went dry. His face and neck started to turn red, like they had the first day he had met her. His palms began to perspire and he could barely make eye contact with her, but before he knew it, she was calling him over to her.
“Oh yes, Mr. Eliezer, I have the medicines you requested,” she said, a bit louder than she had to, as she motioned him to come around the counter and into a supply room behind the main desk.
Jacob followed and saw a large box of supplies waiting for him. He was perplexed. He hadn’t told her he was coming. He certainly had not requested any supplies. Yet there they were. Why?
Suddenly the door closed behind him. As he turned to face her, Abby moved close to him and hugged him tightly. The warmth of her body against his was intoxicating, as was the softness of her cheek against the scratchy stubble of his unshaven face. After a moment, she leaned back a bit, still holding him around the waist but now looking deeply into his eyes. He was surprised to find her eyes filling with tears.
“Good-bye, Jacob,” she whispered in a voice at once intimate and pained.