The Auschwitz Escape

  He couldn’t believe how good it felt to be wearing fresh, clean clothes, and the sweater and jacket over the top felt wonderful as well. He could not remember when he had last felt so insulated from the cold and so comfortable in his own skin. Already he could feel his psychology changing ever so slightly. He couldn’t wait for the hours to pass and for the two of them to finally be free. What would that feel like? Jacob wondered. What would it really feel like to be breathing free air?

  When he was finished changing, Jacob lay down on his stomach on one of the uniforms that had been left behind and tried to stay quiet and motionless while Luc went through the same process. Again, it was challenging to maneuver in such tight quarters and to do so quietly, but Luc finished quickly.

  Then they rooted around for the bag of petrol-soaked Russian tobacco that Josef had pre-positioned for them and found it lying in the corner. They sprinkled the nasty-smelling concoction all around the base of their little fort and in all the crevices they could find. Now they were covered inside and outside of their hideout. Jacob silently prayed this really would throw off the dogs, who were sure to come in full force in just a few short hours.

  When this was done, there were two more things for them to do. The first was to take a few hunks of bread out of the backpack along with two small metal canteens of water and set the provisions between the two of them. The second was for each of them to take a few necessary precautions against sneezing and coughing. Jacob went first, tying a strip of cloth around his head, just over his nose. The way he fixed it around the back of his head gave him the ability to tighten or loosen the cloth without much trouble. If he had the sudden urge to sneeze over the next three days, he was to tighten the cloth in an attempt to prevent the sneeze from happening. For the rest of the time, however, he could keep it loose.

  He also took a fresh, clean handkerchief out of the backpack and held it in his left hand, where it would stay. If he needed to cough, he was first to take a small sip of water from his canteen and then stuff the handkerchief in his mouth in the hopes of stifling it or at least muffling the sound. It might have looked ridiculous, but fortunately he couldn’t see himself or Luc. And who knew—it might just save their lives.

  Finally Jacob fished through the nearly empty backpack for the Swiss Army knife. Before he found it, he felt wrapping paper and a string tied in a bow around a small package. Abby’s gift to him was safe, and he couldn’t wait to open it. He wondered if she had already begun to read his poems.

  A moment later, he found the knife and slipped it into his jacket pocket. He, for one, was not going to be taken alive. If he was found by the Nazis, he was never going to give them the satisfaction of torturing him or hanging him. He was going to slash his wrists and then plunge the knife into his heart. He didn’t want to die. The truth was he was very scared of dying. But he wasn’t going to let the Nazis win.

  That was the one argument he’d had with Luc after inviting the French pastor to be his partner in this escape mission. They had discussed worst-case scenarios, and Jacob had explained his position—the same all the men who had gone before them had taken. Luc, however, had said he refused to commit suicide. It was against God’s way, he said, and it was nonnegotiable.

  Jacob had agreed; it was nonnegotiable. If Luc didn’t promise to commit suicide if caught and thus prevent the naming of other Resistance members throughout the camp, then he couldn’t be part of the mission.

  “So be it,” Luc had said, unwilling to compromise his core religious convictions.

  But Steinberger and Frenkel had overruled Jacob, telling him he could not make willingness to commit suicide if caught a precondition of Luc’s participation in this mission. In the end Jacob had backed down to Luc’s convictions, and that was that.

  Now, as Luc completed his own preparations, he lay down on his stomach as well. Using his watch dial for a bit of light, Luc motioned to their canteens and pantomimed removing the metal tops and then leaning the canteens against the side of the enclosure. They didn’t make much noise unscrewing them, but they made a little. Better to make that noise now than later, when the manhunt would be in full swing. Just that little bit could mean all the difference between getting caught and breaking free.

  Then, to Jacob’s surprise, they were done with all their preparations. All was quiet. Jacob glanced at his watch. It was only 3:23. They had just over three and a half hours before roll call, and then the real mayhem would begin.

  Jacob told himself he should close his eyes and get some sleep, but that was impossible. He was already terrified that a Nazi patrol would be able to hear his heart pounding in his chest. And despite the coolness, he was sweating profusely. What was worse, he was beginning to feel claustrophobic.

  He looked at his watch again. It was 3:24.

  How in the world was he going to make it for eighty-three and a half more hours?

  75

  For the first time in forever, Jacob had too much time on his hands.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he had hours with nothing to do but think, but whenever it was, it not only predated his arrival at Auschwitz, it predated his time in Belgium, too. Indeed, lying on the cold, hard ground on his stomach like this made him think back to days long ago when his uncle was trying to teach him to hunt.

  How he wished he now held the walnut-wood stock of a Mauser carbine rifle in his hands. Jacob no longer feared such power—the power to shatter, to wound, to take a man’s life. Now he understood what Avi had been trying to teach him. The Jews of Europe had been foolish to entrust their safety and security to anyone but themselves. What if they had been organized? What if they had been armed and trained and mobilized? No one could have sent them to concentration camps to perish by the hundreds of thousands. Perhaps they would have died defending themselves, but wouldn’t that have been better than this?

  At the time, Jacob had not understood. That, however, was no longer true. What Avi had told him about King Solomon had been right. There was a time for every activity under the sun. A time to give birth and a time to die. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time for war and a time for peace. It was not for a man to choose his times, but he had to be ready when they came. Jacob had not been ready before. Now he was.

  Jacob could feel his heart beating wildly in his chest. Try as he might, he could not entirely control his breathing. But this wasn’t fear any longer. Not entirely. It was mostly anticipation. He desperately wanted to be free, and not just for his own sake. He couldn’t wait to reach the Jewish leaders in Czechoslovakia and Hungary. He couldn’t wait to meet with the Allied leaders in London and Washington. Jacob had spent all his life too timid to speak. But now he had something to say, and he was determined to say it.

  As Jacob thought about the trajectory of all that he had seen and heard and witnessed and experienced over the past six years or so, he was struck by the counterintuitive manner of his response. The worse things got, the stronger he had become. Back when times were relatively good, he had been so shy he could hardly speak. But now, trapped in hell, he had come to life and found his voice. He wasn’t entirely sure how that had happened, but he wished his parents had been around to see it, and Ruthie, and Avi most of all. He wondered if they would be proud of him. He hoped so.

  Where were they now?

  He lay there quiet and still, mulling that thought. It was a painful question to ask. Almost physically painful. Because he had no answers.

  Josef was certainly sure he had all the answers. He didn’t believe in an afterlife. He said he was a man of science and an atheist. He claimed that no right-thinking scholar could believe in fanciful notions of heaven or hell. According to Josef, life was like a candle. When the flame was blown out, that was it. You ceased to exist. There was no more.

  Max, by contrast, had been a deeply religious man. He had no doubt there was a God who had created the heavens and the earth and all the people therein. As he prattled on and on during their workdays in the Canada command, it
was clear Max had no flicker of doubt whatsoever as to whether there was an afterlife or not. Of course there was.

  These were the only two people Jacob had ever discussed such matters with, he realized as he lay there. He certainly had never discussed religion with Steinberger or Frenkel. There had been too much else to cover when they were together. Nor had he talked about life and death and the mysteries of the universe with the guys in Belgium or the Czechs in the bakery or even with Luc, who by all accounts was very religious.

  He wished he could have discussed religion with Abby. Other than her few fleeting comments in the exam room, they had never had the time or opportunity, but he was certain he would have liked those conversations. To Jacob, Abby was not just a stunning beauty. She was a thoughtful, insightful, intuitive person. She had depth and purpose. He could see it in her eyes; they were full of life and hope, and the more he thought about it, the more he realized that was why he was so drawn to her.

  Jacob thought about the gift she had given him, and his anticipation to open it surged. He was honored that she had wanted to give him anything at all. They had barely spent time together, and yet somehow they had made a connection that Jacob savored and found himself pondering. He wondered what she was doing at that moment. Whatever it was, he knew she was thinking about him, and that quickened something deep inside him. Of all the people in the world, he was the one person in Abby Cohen’s thoughts right now—and in her prayers, too. Like her brother, Max, Abby believed in stuff like that. And in the stillness of the moment, Jacob found himself hoping she was right. He wanted there to be a God who was loving and kind and whom you could talk to and who would answer you. He wanted there to be a God to whom he could pray for Abby to be safe and protected from all harms. He wanted to believe. He just didn’t know if he could.

  Jacob closed his eyes and reimagined the kiss she had given him to say good-bye. He relished the things she had whispered in his ear and the way she had held him. He hadn’t expected any of that. He would have been happy just to have had the chance to lay eyes on her one more time, to tell her thank you, maybe shake her hand. He still couldn’t quite believe how happy she had been to see him.

  Life had a funny way of surprising him. Just when he thought good things were coming, the opposite came true. And just when he thought bad things were coming, something good happened instead. It made him not want to think too much about the future. Or maybe he should always just expect the worst. Most often he would be right, and the few times he was not, at least he would be pleasantly surprised.

  The more he thought about Abby, the quieter his pounding heart became. The heavier his eyelids grew.

  And before he knew it, he had fallen asleep.

  76

  JUNE 2, 1944

  The screaming of the sirens shocked Jacob awake.

  Pure adrenaline rushed through his system. All his senses were on full alert. Luc put a hand on his back as if to say everything was going to be okay. Jacob hoped he was right.

  Jacob checked his watch. It was 7:29, a little earlier than he would have predicted. More than fifty-five thousand Birkenau prisoners were all assembled for the evening roll call, and Jacob could picture the scene. He envisioned Josef standing at attention with his block, holding his breath, hoping the trail would not lead back to him, hoping no one had seen him spending so much time with the fugitives. Jacob could see soldiers mobilizing, running with machine guns, shouting orders, cursing, deployed for the hunt. He could hear hundreds of dogs barking, running, sniffing, searching in every nook and cranny of the camp, though most of them would now be deployed to the enormous manhunt outside the camp.

  For the first twenty or thirty minutes, the drama seemed quite a ways away. But now Jacob could hear soldiers approaching, running and shouting commands. The dogs were getting closer. Lorries were driving by, filled, he could only assume, with men and weapons. Von Strassen’s theory, so the rumor went, was that he and his men had spent too much time checking hiding places inside the camp on previous manhunts. The new goal was to deploy forces a good forty kilometers out and then work backward toward the Auschwitz-Birkenau perimeter. It might take a little longer, but it meant escapees wouldn’t have as clear a path to freedom as they had had in the past.

  Now Jacob could hear several units of soldiers flooding the Birkenau-III camp along with their dogs. He felt a tickle in his throat. All the commotion around them was kicking up an awful lot of dust, and the dust was pouring into their hideaway. He began to panic, terrified that he was about to sneeze. He took a quick sip of water, tightened the cloth around his nose, and put the handkerchief in his mouth. But now the dogs were right on top of them. They were growling and barking as they sniffed the lumber pile. A moment later, someone was scrambling on top of the pile. Before Jacob knew it, someone began taking a piece of lumber off the top.

  Jacob pulled the Swiss Army knife from his pocket and opened the blade.

  Just then shots were fired close to the main camp. There was a commotion and lots of shouting, and suddenly all the troops and dogs that had been right on top of them and about to find them were gone. Jacob could still hear all kinds of activity out there, but the center of the hunt was quickly shifting to the east, and Jacob and Luc began to breathe again.

  As the hours passed, more gunfire could be heard, but not from outside the camp. It came from behind them, inside the camp, and Jacob knew exactly what was happening. Men dropping from exhaustion were being shot in the head.

  Jacob felt overwhelmed by guilt, and he was sure Luc was feeling the same thing. It was hard not to think of it as their fault. Innocent men were suffering—dying—just to give them the chance to go free.

  Jacob tried not to count the shots, but he couldn’t help it. It was up to twenty-three. And now twenty-four.

  77

  Von Strassen could hear his superior screaming obscenities all the way across the courtyard.

  Suddenly a lamp came flying through one of Hoess’s office windows, smashing on the ground right in front of Von Strassen, along with a shower of shattered glass. When he raced up the stairs and finally reached the anteroom outside of Hoess’s office, the typically unflappable Nazi officer felt physically ill as he listened to the full-throated tirade under way behind the door.

  Hoess had become completely unhinged. Though no longer the camp commandant—that post now belonged to Arthur Liebehenschel—Hoess had been brought back to Auschwitz specifically to oversee the Hungarian operation, which was proceeding smoothly except for these recent unaccountable escapes. As chief security officer, it was Von Strassen’s job to keep the prisoners under control, and he was failing miserably.

  Hoess was screaming at someone and threatening to have heads removed from shoulders by sunup. Von Strassen wondered who was taking the man’s wrath, but he found out soon enough. Suddenly the door opened and two of the young women who worked under Von Strassen came out, sobbing uncontrollably. They rushed past their boss without even acknowledging his presence.

  “You!” Hoess fumed when he saw Von Strassen. “Get in this room!”

  The colonel obeyed, then shut the door behind him and stood at attention to take his dressing-down like a man.

  “How could you have let this happen?” Hoess raged, his face turning ever-darker shades of red, curses spewing out of his mouth in every other sentence. “Four prisoners in a week? Six prisoners in two months? Shall we just open the gates and let them all walk out? Is that your plan, Colonel Von Strassen?”

  “Sir, I realize—”

  “Shut up!” Hoess screamed. “How dare you open your mouth to me! Do you know how enraged der Führer is? He wants my head on a platter. But if you think I will go down for this, think again. You will find these men. You will capture them alive. You will personally escort them into this office and then you will watch me execute them—or it will be your head on a platter I send to Berlin.”

  78

  Thunder rumbled overhead.

  The winds picked up, a
nd soon it was raining. It was a light rain at first, but it intensified in the wee hours of the morning. And it was cold.

  The gunshots continued, accelerated even, punctuating the night with guilt and shame. Fifty-six so far. Fifty-seven.

  Jacob tried to imagine the look on his block senior’s face when Jacob’s number had come up as one of the missing. He must have told the guards that Jacob had spent much of the day in Birkenau-III. Had they believed him? Or had they thought he was part of the conspiracy? For the first time Jacob wondered if perhaps they had tortured him. Maybe they had even shot him already.

  Then he thought of the Czechs who worked at the bakery. Certainly Von Strassen and his men were tearing the bakery apart. So far as Jacob knew, he and Luc had left no clues. The Czechs had never had an inkling of what was going on. They were good men, and Luc had been insistent that they be insulated from any retaliation. But at this point, who knew what was happening? With so many escapes in just a matter of days, Jacob realized that Von Strassen’s own job could be in jeopardy. Perhaps even his life.

  Jacob hoped that as the hours passed, a buzz would sweep through the camp, a wave of hope that two more of their comrades had escaped and not yet been caught. He knew Josef was rooting for them, and Abby, of course. He hoped others were too, wondering, Could they really make it? Might they tell the world our story and come back to set us free? That’s how he had felt when Leszek and the others escaped and again when Steinberger and Frenkel broke away. It had given him hope, and even a shred of hope, he had discovered, was a powerful force.

  – – –

  A watched pot never boils.

  It was something his mother used to say. Now, as Jacob stared at his watch, he could hear her whispering to him that time would never pass this way. Go to sleep, she told him. You have a very hard journey ahead of you. You need your rest.