by Ben Stevens
Now he saw what he assumed was the entrance, the track which led away from this certain to join the road that split the forest into two. Although he saw two guards walking slowly along together, he did not see any sign of the camp’s prisoners. This did not surprise him; from what he’d overheard from the SA men he’d understood that, during the day, the inmates dug trenches at a clearing close by. It was up to him to find that clearing, for then it was quite possible he’d see Erich Heinemann…
Leaving the forest he walked back to his car, deciding to drive along the road that led into the forest. That there would be one track leading off was certain: this would be the one that gave access to the small prison camp. Therefore it stood to reason that another would be the one which led to this apparent clearing.
As he drove his heart beat almost painfully – he’d come this far: there could be no turning back now. This was the biggest challenge of his life, and he was determined to succeed.
One track on his left… that was the one which led to the camp… And yes! Another approximately one hundred yards past the first! A little further and Rath discovered a natural lay-by. It was a risk to leave his car so near to the camp but the risk had to be taken: he had to see this clearing for himself and he had to see it now. Re-entering the forest, he walked only a little distance before he was again stopped by the fence.
Again, the clearing was some twenty yards away, and much bigger than the camp. Grinning triumphantly, Rath observed the men toiling in the trenches which covered the area. His eyesight excellent, he searched for Erich Heinemann, the grin disappearing as he failed to find him – had he been moved on?
Had he died?
Suddenly, Rath caught his breath as he noticed two figures working in the far corner of the clearing. From this distance one certainly looked like the thin violinist, but there was only one way of making absolutely sure…
It took the music tutor almost half an hour to skirt round the fence, walking slightly away when the border of trees between him, the barbed-wire, and the clearing became a little too thin for comfort. A couple of guards were walking slowly around the perimeter, their heads bowed, their apathy obvious even at this distance.
Finally, Rath was close enough to the two prisoners labouring in the corner to see that one of them was indeed Heinemann; he shovelled earth out of a trench while above him stood a short, powerful-looking man who wielded a pickaxe.
With several days’ growth of beard, the Mischling looked grim and tired. However, when the stocky man appeared to say something Rath was surprised to see the teenager manage a slight smile.
Here in the corner of this clearing the two men were removed from the main body of the slave labourers and the attentions of the patrolling guards; Rath could barely have hoped for such good luck. The fence could be cut with no fear of the hole being discovered for a good long time, and sneaking through the trees Rath could get to within a few feet of where Heinemann worked.
But that other man – did he never go away?
No, he did not, realised Rath after he’d waited, crouching, for almost an hour. Although the two prisoners spoke without hardly moving their mouths, Rath noticed that they frequently conversed with one another. Furthermore they seemed friendly, often exchanging a quick grin as they worked.
This complicated matters – Rath had not envisioned breaking two men out of the camp. He needed to return, and to somehow contact Erich Heinemann. But this problem was not insurmountable; security hardly appeared to be the strongpoint of this camp.
He vowed to return the following Saturday, to use the week in between now and then to try and realise just how he could get a message to Heinemann. He’d also use this time to study his maps at home – to discover just where the best place along the border was to attempt a crossing into Switzerland.
26
With a noisy sniff, Kasek opened the heavy iron plate of the thick concrete pipe that was at the furthest edge of the camp. Carefully taking a bucket from Heinemann, he then gingerly emptied its contents into the pipe. There was a faint splash from some twenty feet below.
‘Away it go, away it go, where shit go, no one know,’ chanted the Pole quietly, his wide grin visible even in the dark.
Throwing the empty bucket to one side, he accepted another from Heinemann. Neither of the cellmates knew why they’d been selected to slop-out the prisoners’ waste in the evening – it was usually a punishment given for slacking while working – and so they’d naturally cursed their bad luck at first. It had to be done after they’d eaten, and always between half past eight and nine o’clock.
Collecting the bucketed waste from each cell, escorted by Eckhart, Heinemann and Kasek would take it to the disposal point that was situated right beside the surrounding forest. Having emptied all the buckets they then sprayed them with a hose; any water that splashed back on them was both shocking with its coldness, and unpleasant with the idea of what it was tainted with.
After a few days, however, the two prisoners had found themselves actually looking forward to the revolting duty, though Heinemann still wondered why it had to be done in the evening instead of the morning.
They were left alone for up to half an hour, and being so close to the dark forest they could hear the sounds that were so evocative of freedom: the wind sighing through the branches, and from further away a dog barking and occasionally the swish of a car on the road, as it hurried along towards lights, buildings and people.
At times like these Kasek would become almost melancholic, talking of home and the beloved sister whom he’d not seen in two years. He’d no idea if she was alive or dead. Heinemann found himself telling the Pole of Marie, and in his own manner Kasek comforted him.
When Eckhart returned at nine o’clock the two men carried the emptied and cleaned buckets in relays back to the cells, the guard unlocking the doors long enough for them to throw one in.
Having been allowed to thoroughly wash their hands, Kasek and Heinemann were then returned to their own cell.
*
The following Saturday Enrich Rath walked with cautious speed through the forest to where he could observe Heinemann and the other man working. A light but steady drizzle was falling, his long, fair fringe slicked down on his forehead. Irritably, he pushed it away from his eyes. Sticking out of his back trouser pocket was a pair of steel croppers, the best tool for the job ahead...
Hidden behind the fence and the ten yards of forest before the clearing, Rath watched the teenager and the stocky man for a while. Then, having produced the croppers, he hesitated as the blades gripped the first wire strand, reluctant to apply the necessary pressure. The urge to get up and walk away consumed him...
Biting his lip he used both hands to close the cropper’s blades. The wire parted instantly. With characteristic neatness the lecturer cut-out three sides of a square three feet across and three feet down to the ground, using the uncut side as a ‘hinge’ to push open this entrance.
He took several deep breaths, and produced a small piece of paper from his pocket. This he scrunched into a tight ball, and then he crawled through the improvised entrance towards the edge of the clearing.
Reaching the stunted bushes and long yellow grass that grew five yards away from where Heinemann and Kasek were working, Rath lay motionless for almost quarter of an hour, expecting at any moment to feel the hard impression of a rifle tip in between his shoulder blades. He considered giving a quiet whistle but he was so very afraid that the two patrolling guards would hear, though they were in fact some distance away.
His dilemma was solved by Heinemann’s need to urinate. Putting down his shovel, the Mischling hauled himself out of the trench and walked over towards where the music lecturer lay. It seemed incredible to Rath that his former student did not see him, as he unbuttoned his trousers and pissed inches away from his right ear.
‘Erich!’ he rasped.
Heinemann stood as though frozen, his hands paused in the act of buttoning himself back up. Only his
eyes moved as he looked down at the figure lying close to his feet, who then placed a scrunched ball of paper beside one of his boots – for Rath had considered that he’d have to throw this towards Heinemann. It was certainly a piece of good luck that he was actually able to speak to the young violinist.
‘Read this. I’ll be here next Saturday, same time,’ said Rath in a low, harsh voice. ‘Write me an answer, on the back if you have to. I know where you are, I can almost get into the camp where you’re kept – it’s incredibly badly guarded. I’ll get you out: out of here and out of Germany. That goes for your friend too, if you want.’
Having said this Rath crawled rapidly away. A cry came from behind Heinemann, and he looked round to see a guard shouting at him from some distance away. Assuming that this guard wished to know what he was doing – he could not hear his words – he turned round and made a show of doing up his trousers.
Having started to walk quickly towards him, the guard then evidently changed his mind: he resumed his patrol in the opposite direction.
In an action that appeared only as though he was tightening his boot laces, Heinemann picked up the scrunched piece of paper. With his heart beating so fast he thought it might burst he placed the tight ball inside his pocket, and then got back into the trench. The temptation to see what was written was overwhelming, but he would not do so until later, when he was in his cell.
Noticing his absorbed expression, the Pole looked at him quizzically.
Seeing this, Heinemann said, ‘Kasek, listen very carefully…’
Emptying the buckets that night, the two prisoners still felt the disbelief that someone who existed in the distant world of freedom had come so far into their own, offering them a chance to escape from this captivity with its mud, hunger, shit and cold.
After Heinemann’s explanation of what had happened when he’d innocently strolled over to take a leak Kasek had fallen silent, the brown eyes darkening under the heavy brow as he thought.
Finally he’d said, ‘Why? Why have you told me this? Why do you want to help me?’
Shrugging, the violinist had replied, ‘Two heads are better than one, Kasek. Rath will be back next Saturday, and we’d better have half an idea about how we can get out of here. He’s got a car – we can get quickly away.’
Heinemann wanted to tell the Pole that his puckish demeanour and straightforward friendliness had saved him from the total despair he’d felt upon entering the camp; that he considered Kasek to be his best friend. But, of course, he could not: such a thing would have been anathema in a place like this.
Rath’s note – which basically reiterated what he’d told Heinemann himself – had been quietly read out by the Mischling as he and Kasek had eaten their evening soup and bread:
I have come to get you out, but I need your help to do so. I will be here same time next Saturday. Give me a way to get you out, and so to Switzerland.
Now, some hours later as they emptied the buckets, they could still not decide how to escape from the prison camp. Everything suggested was too dangerous, too open to immediate discovery. Their cell’s window was too small to get through, even if its metal bars could have been removed...
It was a dog barking from some distance away that gave the solution to both men: Heinemann paused, a bucket balanced on the edge of the concrete pipe. He sensed rather than saw Kasek staring at him through the dark with the same realisation – the area by the pipe was secluded: until they were collected they were left alone to clean the buckets, no guard wishing to be near such an unpleasant duty…
‘You do see – do see?’ hissed the Pole, and with that he suddenly slipped into the dark forest.
‘Kasek, what are you doing?’ demanded Heinemann, but there was no reply. One nerve-racking minute later the Pole returned, breathless from his exertions and extremely excited.
‘Fence a bit in, but that your friend can cut as he must have one round big field. He can be waiting for us on road not far away and we gone!’
Grabbing each other’s arms, they shared the thrill of a decent plan. Then Heinemann recovered himself.
‘Enough. Let’s get these buckets empty before Eckhart comes back.’
‘You right – but you have paper still?’
‘Of course.’
‘Well, write to friend, tell him.’
The violinist suddenly realised just what had been overlooked; he said bitterly, ‘We haven’t got anything to write with, Kasek.’
Determinedly shaking his head, the Pole said, ‘We have week. Time still to get pencil.’
27
On the Tuesday of the following week Heinemann was forced to clean out the buckets by himself. Just after he and Kasek had finished their evening meal, Eckhart opened the cell-door and said, ‘You’ll be slopping the shit out by yourself tonight, Jew-boy. Kasek, you’re wanted elsewhere.’
Accompanied by another guard who said not one word, Heinemann collected, emptied and cleaned the buckets in a haze of worry. Perhaps he’d seen the last of the Pole – two prisoners had simply vanished during the last month, to be replaced by two others.
But Kasek was there when Heinemann was returned to the cell – lying on the bottom bunk, his face covered with blood. The door clanged shut, and the Mischling knelt by his friend.
‘Kasek, what happened? What have they done to you?’
As the Pole coughed weakly, blood ran from his mouth.
‘They do from time to time, for fun. Like I say – guards not bad as SS, but sometime…’
For a moment Heinemann thought that he saw an infinite sadness flare in the older prisoner’s eyes; then Kasek said, ‘Tomorrow I clean buckets with you again, and look…’
Opening his fist, Heinemann saw that the Pole had the one thing that had been preventing them from writing a message to Rath.
‘While they hit I find this on floor, manage to grab without them see…’
‘This’ was the stubby end of a pencil.
*
Early Saturday morning they were both pacing about the cell, their arms wrapped around their chests, trying to install a semblance of warmth into their frozen bodies. The moon splashed a little cold light through the barred window.
Heinemann realised that for all their ownership of a pencil they still hadn’t written a reply to Rath – it was difficult to know what to write: just to put their plan into words seemed an inordinately difficult task.
‘We’ve got to write that note to Rath, Kasek, before we’re taken to work.’
The Pole nodded with a marked lack of enthusiasm that Heinemann attributed to the cold and a lack of sleep. He’d never imagined seeing Kasek looking this despondent and worn out. The harsh life of the camp was beginning to get to him, cracking the puckish but sturdy defences.
It took them five minutes to agree on what to write, and then Heinemann produced the note and the precious pencil stub from under his mattress and – just able to see by the light of the moon – scrawled on the reverse side of the crumpled piece of paper:
Around camp find fence and cut as close to a circular concrete structure as you can. Be waiting by this at 8.30 exactly the day after tomorrow (Monday). Don’t worry too much: security here is poor. Bring change of clothing for two men, and have car parked close but not too close by. From 8.30 we have at most half an hour before alarm will be raised. Raise your thumb if you understand and agree.
Below this he drew a rough diagram with labelled ‘X’s marking the relevant spots. This along with the written instructions would have to suffice: if Enrich Rath could follow them then they were already halfway to freedom.
A thought checked Heinemann’s mounting excitement – it was certain that the other prisoners would be punished should he and Kasek succeed in escaping, through either reduced rations or extra work.
After the man had been shot dead trying to escape on Christmas morning, the inmates had been made to work Sunday as a full day for a month. Their liberty could conceivably cause another man’s death – in
such a hard environment it would not take that much extra work, or that little less food, for such a thing to occur.
Did his own life and freedom justify that?
This was a question he dared not consider.
28
Later that same morning Enrich Rath stole through the pine trees, skirting the fence to reach the area where he assumed Heinemann and the other man would still be working.
For a moment he paused, captivated, as a small bird dragged a worm from the ground and flew away. He briefly imagined the German public as a nest of chicks, their beaks open, waiting for the lies and propaganda to be fed to them by a great neurotic bird called Goebbels.
Then, reaching the hole he’d cut in the fence the previous Saturday, Rath crawled through. Heinemann and the other man were working in approximately the same place as before, the trench having advanced only slightly in the previous week. Rath could clearly see the suspense etched in both men’s faces; he noticed how regularly they looked in his direction.
Then his heart seemed to stop beating as he saw a guard approaching – in his excitement he’d not noticed him before.
To retreat would possibly be to attract attention, for despite his best efforts he made some noise when crawling across the ground. So he lay absolutely still, his hands cupping his mouth to try and prevent his breath from steaming. He could only hope that he was hidden by the yellow grass and stunted bushes that framed the clearing.
Hours seemed to pass before he looked up to see that the guard was well away. Then his eyes met those of his former student. Both men dropped the gaze and Heinemann continued working for the next five minutes. Mud was slicked across one side of his face and his forehead, making his grey eyes seem darker, his sallow features more brooding. Once Rath saw him speaking almost without moving his mouth to the stocky man, who consequently looked over to where Rath was concealed.
