The Auschwitz Escape

  “Last I heard, about 483,000,” Jacob said, feeling sick at the thought. “But that number is going up every day. It could be over half a million at this point.”

  “Did the Jewish council in Czechoslovakia get the report to the Jewish leaders in Hungary?”

  “So far as I know, but we didn’t stay around long enough to find out for sure.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because when the council could finally figure out a way to get us safely out of the country, including false papers and so forth, they immediately sent me to find you. The others went to London.”

  Jacob waited for the next question, but it did not come. Instead the octogenarian former diplomat sat back in his chair, puffed on his cigar, and silently flipped through the pages of the Auschwitz Protocol.

  After a bit, his wife got up and padded into the kitchen, eventually bringing back a fresh pot of tea. She poured cups for them both, but to no effect. The old man didn’t touch it. Jacob didn’t reach for his either. He just kept still and tried to read the expression on the old man’s face. He searched for any sign of acceptance or rejection of the message Jacob had come to deliver. Yet he simply could not read the man. His face was inscrutable.

  After almost twenty minutes, d’Astier leaned forward and, without saying anything to Jacob, picked up the telephone receiver from the end table beside him. Then he dialed, leaned back, and waited.

  “Helen, it’s François. Is Jack there?” he finally said into the receiver. “Actually, it is quite urgent. . . . Well, I’m sitting with a man who just escaped out of Nazi-controlled Poland. He has vital information the president needs to see immediately.”

  Jacob’s heart leaped. Was this for real? Was Ambassador d’Astier really requesting a meeting for him with the president of the United States?

  “No, it cannot wait,” the ambassador said after a brief pause. “Thank you.”

  There was a long pause. Jacob was dying to know what was happening, but the old man never looked at him. Rather, he kept leafing through the Protocol. Finally, whoever the ambassador was calling came on the line.

  “Jack, thanks for taking my call. I need to bring someone to see the president right away,” he began. “Yes, it is that urgent. . . . No, it’s too sensitive to discuss over the phone. . . . Well, I’ve never needed a meeting on such short notice. . . . Of course. . . . That would be fine. Thank you. We’ll see you then.”

  The old man hung up the phone. “They’re sending a car,” he said, snuffing out his cigar.

  “Who?” Jacob asked.

  “The White House.”

  Jacob gulped. “We’re really meeting with President Roosevelt?”

  “No. We’re meeting with his military aide, a lieutenant colonel by the name of Jack Dancy. We have to convince him first, but if we do, we might be able to meet the president tomorrow.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” Jacob said, a lump forming in his throat. “But thank you.”

  “I’m not doing this for you, Mr. Weisz,” d’Astier replied. “I’m doing it for my grandson—for Luc—and for every Frenchman held in those camps. If all you say is true—and I must tell you it is very difficult to accept at face value, but you certainly have an awful lot of documentation here—then we cannot be silent. We must take action. And I have no doubt that once Mr. Roosevelt and his staff know what is happening and can verify it, they will take decisive action.”

  100

  But they did not.

  To be sure, Jack Dancy was gracious with his time. He gave Jacob forty-five minutes in his spacious and well-appointed West Wing office to make his case. He skimmed through the Auschwitz Protocol while Jacob gave an abbreviated account of the narrative he had told the ambassador. And Dancy asked Jacob for additional copies of the documents to give to the president, the secretary of war, the secretary of state, and the director of the Office of Strategic Services.

  Then the aide asked Jacob one simple, blunt question.

  “What do you want?”

  “I beg your pardon?” Jacob replied, caught off guard by the directness of the inquiry.

  “You heard me,” Dancy replied.

  “Well, I . . . I just . . .”

  “Surely you did not come all this way just to give me a long memo, Mr. Weisz,” Dancy said with nary a hint of compassion. “You want something. What is it?”

  Again Jacob fumbled for the words. He was disoriented and exhausted. He was in awe of being in the White House, just a few steps from the Oval Office. He was intimidated by the Marine guards and the beauty and the history, and he felt young and out of place.

  “Liberation,” he finally said.

  Dancy did a double take. “Say again?”

  “We want you to liberate the camp,” Jacob repeated. “And not just Auschwitz-Birkenau, but all the others, too.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Dancy asked, visibly dumbfounded.

  “No, sir.”

  “How many camps are there?”

  “About 1,200.”

  Dancy laughed out loud.

  “I’m afraid I fail to see the humor, Mr. Dancy,” Jacob said, his anger suddenly rising, though he saw the look in the ambassador’s eyes, imploring him to be diplomatic.

  “So you just want the president to call up General Eisenhower and tell him to take all of the Allied forces who just stormed the beaches of Normandy and are finally moving across France and divert all their efforts from liberating Europe and focus on liberating 1,200 Nazi labor camps.”

  “They’re not labor camps,” Jacob said. “They’re death camps.”

  “All of Europe is a death camp, son. In case you hadn’t noticed, people are dying everywhere—including a lot of our own boys.”

  “Not like this,” Jacob said defiantly. “Colonel Dancy, did you hear what I just told you? People are being put in gas chambers. Children are being tossed into ovens. Innocents are being mowed down by gunfire. The most gruesome experiments are being done on them—while they are alive. Were you listening to any of that?”

  Dancy just stared at him, clearly not having expected such a forceful confrontation from a gaunt Jewish boy from Germany.

  “Of course I was listening,” Dancy finally replied. “But maybe you weren’t listening. Ten thousand Allied soldiers, sailors, and airmen were killed or wounded on D-day alone, including almost seven thousand Americans. Don’t make it sound like we’re not doing everything we can to liberate Europe, to say nothing of the Pacific. We didn’t get into this war right away. We didn’t listen to Churchill when he begged us to help the Brits stop Hitler early. That was our mistake. But we’re in it now. I’m sympathetic to you and the plight of your people. I’ll take your report and run it up the chain of command. I’ll make sure it gets a fair hearing. But I can guarantee you General Eisenhower is not going to change his war plan to liberate 1,200 Nazi camps.”

  At that point the ambassador stepped in. “Well, what about just one, Jack?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Would the president consider ordering the liberation of just one camp?” d’Astier clarified.

  “This Auschwitz place?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Dancy said.

  “Of course it’s possible,” d’Astier returned, showing the first signs of emotional strain. “It’s not a matter of capacity. It’s a matter of will.”

  “Mr. Ambassador, with all due respect, it most certainly is a matter of capacity. To liberate a Nazi concentration camp means sending thousands of troops—probably tens of thousands—deep behind enemy lines. Plus providing air cover. And then we have to get all our boys out of there again, along with all the prisoners. That simply isn’t possible under current conditions.”

  Jacob couldn’t believe what he was hearing. But the old man did not give up. “Jack, you and I have known each other a long time, have we not?”

  Dancy nodded.

  “When Hitler rose to power, I came to you
and told you what was happening in my country and what was going to happen, did I not?”

  “You did.”

  “And when it began to happen, I fed you as much intelligence as I could get my hands on, and then I came to you to ask for political asylum, correct?”

  Again Dancy nodded.

  “I told you the man was a demon,” d’Astier said. “But even I underestimated what he was capable of. I never could have seen this coming, this systematic extermination of the Jewish people. Millions are dead. And one of them is my grandson.”

  “Jean-Luc?”

  “Yes.”

  “I had no idea,” Dancy said, looking genuinely troubled. “What happened?”

  D’Astier briefly recounted the story Jacob had told him just a few hours earlier.

  “I was not going to bring it up,” the ambassador said in conclusion. “I didn’t want to make this personal. I didn’t want to appeal to you as a friend. I wanted you to look at the evidence and decide on its merits. But I don’t think you are hearing what this young man is saying, Jack. This is not normal warfare. This is not just a few more people dying. This is something else altogether. This deserves the president’s most earnest consideration. And it deserves action. Before millions more die.”

  Suddenly Dancy’s phone rang, and the meeting was over.

  Jacob wheeled Ambassador d’Astier out of the White House, and they soon found themselves on Pennsylvania Avenue on a lovely July evening. The air was warm and humid, almost sultry. The trees swayed slightly in the breeze. The moon was full.

  But as Jacob drank in the scene and stared at the president’s beautiful, majestic home all bathed in spotlights shining from several directions, his heart sank. How could he have come all this way only to be told no? Was the world’s most powerful country really not going to lift a finger to free Abby or Josef or the rest of the doomed souls back in Poland?

  “Don’t despair, Jacob,” the ambassador said as Jacob pushed his wheelchair to the waiting car. “We made our case. Jack is a fair man. I’m sure he will do the right thing. But we won’t wait. Tomorrow we’ll talk to someone else. If Jack won’t authorize decisive action, we’ll keep talking to people of influence in this town until we find someone who will.”

  101

  The next day they went to the State Department.

  Secretary Hull was traveling, but William Barrett, the secretary’s top aide, agreed to meet with them. They gave Barrett a copy of the Auschwitz Protocol, but he was extremely busy and gave them very little time to explain what was happening and what they wanted.

  “Liberation?” Barrett asked as if he were amused. “You’re not serious.”

  “I’m dead serious,” Jacob said, speaking with a sense of conviction he was sure his uncle would never have imagined he was capable of.

  “Well, I’m sorry, but that’s out of the question,” Barrett said. “D-day was less than two months ago. Eisenhower has his hands full, and frankly so do we. Besides, it’s not me that you want. You should be talking to the War Refugee Board.”

  “We will,” the ambassador said. “But you know as well as I do that they’re a toothless tiger. The power rests here, Bill. If action is going to be taken, it’s because you and the secretary make it happen.”

  “I’m sorry, but my cup runneth over, Mr. Ambassador. I took this meeting as a courtesy, but I really must go.”

  Jacob realized the meeting was about to come to a close. “What about air strikes?” he asked desperately.

  “Air strikes?” Barrett asked.

  “Right.”

  “What kind of air strikes?”

  “Bombing the train tracks leading into Auschwitz.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, theoretically that’s possible, of course,” Barrett replied. “But it would be a very dangerous mission. Remember, southern Poland is deep behind enemy lines.”

  “Yes, I realize that.” Jacob was doing his best to restrain himself but feared he was about to come unglued.

  “Well, then, you also know that the German Luftwaffe is formidable. It would be quite an undertaking to send bombers that far, and we would need fighters to protect them. There could be heavy losses.”

  “There are already heavy losses,” Jacob said. “Inside the camp. That’s our whole point. An entire race of people is being exterminated.”

  “Yes, but I’m speaking of our air assets,” Barrett said. “Anyway, this is not a matter for State. It’s a matter for the War Department.”

  “But you’ve done it before,” Jacob said.

  “Pardon?”

  “You’ve bombed the Auschwitz camp before,” Jacob repeated. “So it can be done.”

  “No, I don’t believe we have,” Barrett said.

  “Yes, you have. I was there. A few months ago, I saw Allied bombers attack a factory on the edge of the Auschwitz complex. All the prisoners started cheering. We thought the liberation had begun. But then the bombers and their escorts disappeared, and we never saw them again.”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

  “Could you check on it?” the ambassador asked.

  “I really think you should talk to the War Department,” Barrett said, standing and putting on his coat. “I’m late for a meeting at the White House. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

  Jacob got to his feet as well, but the ambassador was not finished. “History will not, Bill,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “History will not forgive you if you do not seriously review this evidence, if you do not properly brief the secretary, and if you do nothing to stop this genocide,” d’Astier said. “Have you forgotten the St. Louis? Have you forgotten those 937 German Jews who were trying to flee from Hitler, trying to find a haven of refuge? You turned the ship away. You turned them away and forced them to go back to Europe. They’re probably all dead, Bill. They may have been sent to Auschwitz, for all we know. Maybe five years ago you could say you didn’t really know who Hitler was. Maybe you could say you didn’t know he was capable of genocide. But what about now? Now you do know. It’s all there. It’s all detailed in the Auschwitz Protocol. The world is watching. What are you going to do?”

  102

  Day after day went by, and they made no headway whatsoever.

  Jacob and d’Astier asked for and were granted dozens of meetings. They met with congressmen and senators. They met with officials at the War Department and the OSS. They met with members of the War Refugee Board, who were the most sympathetic, but the Refugee Board couldn’t make policy. They tried repeatedly to meet with Secretary Hull, but he was growing ill and taking fewer meetings. They tried repeatedly to meet with the president, but to no avail.

  At one point, Jacob reached Otto Steinberger by phone. He learned that the Protocol had been distributed to officials in Great Britain and at the World Jewish Congress and to Allen Dulles, head of U.S. intelligence in Switzerland. The team had met personally with several senior British officials, including Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, and had given each a copy of the report. They, too, had urged the Allies to bomb the railways to Auschwitz-Birkenau, but they, too, had met the same resistance, told time and time again that it was too risky and that the Germans would simply rebuild the tracks. So Steinberger said they had gone a step further. They had asked the British to bomb and destroy Auschwitz entirely, despite the terrible loss of life that would ensue, on the basis that the Germans would have neither the time nor the resources to rebuild a death camp at this stage of the war, and that this would prevent millions of additional deaths. But their pleas seemed to fall on deaf ears.

  Finally, in desperation, d’Astier suggested to Jacob that they leak copies of the Protocol to various influential American and British reporters in the hopes that the sensational headlines would spark public outrage and bring pressure to bear on the Allied leaders.

  At first Jacob was hesitant. He had no experience in such things, and he was under
strict orders from the Jewish council’s leadership to give the document only to government officials who could effect change. But the ambassador’s case was persuasive. Following the Jewish council’s strategy was getting them nowhere. Perhaps this was the only way.

  Jacob tried to track down Steinberger again but could not reach him. Then he tried to find Frenkel, Fischer, and Kopecký, but he couldn’t locate them, either.

  They were running out of time. So Jacob made a decision he hoped his colleagues would forgive him for. He and d’Astier met again with several sympathetic members of the U.S. Refugee Board and asked them to leak copies of the Auschwitz Protocol to select reporters.

  To Jacob’s astonishment, the effect was instantaneous and explosive. Unlike the diplomats, the reporters immediately understood the horror of the story. They could see the credibility of the evidence, and they felt the emotional impact of this heretofore largely unknown human drama.

  The story created a media firestorm, making front-page headlines throughout the United States, and quickly became news around the world.

  “Two Million Executed in Nazi Camps,” read the Washington Post headline, with the subhead “Gassing, Cremation Assembly-Line Methods Told by War Refugee Board.”

  The New York Times headline read, “U.S. Board Bares Atrocity Details Told by Witnesses at Polish Camps.”

  “U.S. Charges Nazis Tortured Millions to Death in Europe,” screamed the headline in the New York Herald Tribune.

  And it wasn’t simply the major newspapers that reported the story. Small and regional papers did too.

  “The Inside Story of Mass Murdering by the Nazis,” read a headline in the Louisville Courier-Journal. In just three weeks, 383 similar stories were published.

  Not surprisingly, much of the public was outraged. Jewish and Christian leaders who hadn’t known before what was happening in the camps now appealed to the Roosevelt administration to take action.

  Yet nothing happened. Neither the U.S. nor the British bombed the rails. Nor did they bomb the camps. Auschwitz was not liberated. It was not put out of business. The Allies’ fight against the Axis powers continued, of course, and day after day Jacob tracked its progress through the papers and on the radio.