by Jay Winik
Vrba was heartsick. Having hoped in vain for a rebellion among the prisoners, he realized now that his only course was to flee and to somehow warn the world. For months, Vrba had been secretly plotting his escape. He knew that every effort thus far had failed. However, he had no choice but to act.
AT THE START OF 1944, the Nazis began building an additional railway line at Auschwitz, one that led straight to the gas chambers. There would be no need for trucks, no need for selections; the train doors would simply open and men, women, and children would be shunted immediately to their deaths. Aghast, Vrba could see the new tracks from his office window, could watch these tracks “edging their way up the broad road.” He saw prisoners slaving away on them day and night, even under arc lights to lengthen the working hours. He also noticed that other inmates were hammering and building; they were almost doubling the size of the camp. The expansion of Auschwitz could mean only one thing: the Nazis were preparing to receive a huge influx of Jews. The only place left with a large population of Jews was Hungary. This was corroborated by the SS, who said that the camp was expecting new transfers, and crudely joked about “Hungarian salami.” Vrba knew what this meant. When Jews from the Netherlands were gassed, he had heard that the SS boasted about eating the cheese these victims had packed for the journey; when French Jews arrived, the SS feasted on sardines; when Greek Jews came into the camp, the SS had the halvah and olives they carried in their bundles.
Vrba and his friends estimated that 1 million Jews living inside Hungary were in jeopardy. Transporting and killing this many would be a record, even for Auschwitz. Still, it seemed not only plausible but possible. German newspapers, which some of the prisoner leaders found, were reporting that the German military had marched into Hungary “to restore order.” A puppet leader had been installed, and the Nazis now controlled the Hungarians’ fate. Slowly, Vrba absorbed these massive facts. Now he wanted to do more than simply expose the Nazis’ crimes against humanity; he wanted to prevent further crimes. He ambitiously hoped to warn the Hungarians, to help raise “an army one million strong, an army that would fight rather than die.” If the Hungarians knew what awaited them, Vrba believed, they could at least put up resistance before boarding the transports, and perhaps they could even be saved.
Painstakingly Vrba assessed every previous unsuccessful escape attempt, scrutinizing its flaws and seeking to correct them.
HE HAD FEW ILLUSIONS about the difficulty of cracking the Nazi defenses. But although he accepted that everyone else in the camp “might die,” he always felt, almost as an article of faith, that he himself would somehow succeed. He knew the penalties of a failed escape: he had seen them at the end of his very first week in Auschwitz. Marching with his detachment toward the barracks one afternoon, Vrba saw two mobile gallows. Thousands of prisoners had been gathered, under the watchful eyes of Rudolf Hoess, the camp commandant. Then an Oberscharführer bellowed in a loud, carrying voice that two Polish prisoners had been caught trying to escape: “This is something which the camp administration will not tolerate.” Surrounded by two columns of SS men, the two emaciated, dirt-smudged, barefoot prisoners were dragged out to the gallows; ostentatiously pinned to their tunics were notices that read, “Because we tried to escape.” The prisoners’ steps were accompanied by the increasingly loud crescendo from two dozen military drums, but the captives showed no signs of indignation or weakness or fear. Only on reaching the wooden stairs did they falter. One of them began to make a speech, but the din of the twenty-four drummers extinguished his words. Vainly, he continued to speak as the hangman slipped the ropes around both men’s necks and pulled the levers. The trapdoors opened; there was first one dull thump, then another. To Vrba’s horror, the prisoners fell only half a foot or so. They were not being hanged; they were being slowly strangled. The assembled men watched as the would-be escapees writhed frantically, then slowly, then not at all.
The drums stopped, and a black silence descended, broken only by the harsh order that Vrba and the rest of the prisoners stand at attention for another hour, staring at the corpses. The assembled Nazis withdrew. Underneath a setting sun, Vrba, swallowing every insult, looked at the dangling prisoners and cemented his own resolution to escape.
THE CHALLENGE FOR VRBA—AND it was a challenge—was that Auschwitz was divided into an outer camp where the inmates worked and an inner camp where they slept. In that sense, one had to escape not once, but twice. Like a medieval castle, the inner camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau was ringed by a moat: a water-filled trench six yards wide and five yards deep. In turn, this moat was surrounded by two separate high-voltage electrified barbed-wire fences fifteen feet tall. And beyond these physical barriers were human ones. Night and day SS men trained their machine guns on the prisoners from their watchtowers. Once dusk fell, arc lights brilliantly illuminated the barracks and the barbed-wire fences. If any prisoner managed to break through these barriers, sirens and whistles would blare as the outer towers sounded the alert. Within seconds, three thousand men and two hundred snarling dogs would be racing to seal off the entire area. And the open space that they had to patrol, between the inner and outer camps, was completely bare; it was explicitly designed to be a killing field. Any escapee crossing that dusty, empty plain would be easy prey, completely at the mercy of cross fire from the two sets of towers lining the perimeters.
One shred of hope for Vrba was that after a high alert, the troops and dogs would patrol the camp for only three days and nights. If the escapee wasn’t caught by then, the Germans retrenched, assuming the inmates had broken out. At this point, the search would be turned over to the vast web of SS authorities beyond Auschwitz. “It was clear to me,” Vrba later recounted, “that a man who could remain hidden beyond the inner perimeter for three days and three nights had a reasonable chance.”
A reasonable chance perhaps, but no one had yet figured out a way to do this. So Vrba, as he lay on his hard plank at night before drifting off to sleep, began what he called his “first scientific study” on “the technique of escape.”
Soon, Vrba found an ally. An inmate from Russia, big, burly Dimitri Volkov, took Vrba under his wing; Vrba had often given Volkov his bread and margarine rations and for months, with Vrba using his self-taught Russian, they had discussed great Russian writers. Then one day, their talk changed. Cocky, knowledgeable, a former army captain, and now a POW, Volkov gave Vrba a crash course in the essentials of a successful escape. Volkov explained that Vrba would need a knife to defend himself, and a razor blade in case he got caught—to slit his own throat. He would need a compass and a watch, so that he could time his journey and figure out where he was. And he should travel only at night; daytime was for sleeping. He would also need salt, because with salt and potatoes, he could “keep going for months.” However, he should never carry money, because if he was starving he’d be tempted to buy food. Instead, Volkov said, he must stay away from people. Also, he insisted, Vrba should never get “drunk with freedom.” In other words, as Volkov put it, “the fight only begins when you are away from the camp.”
Perhaps his most practical advice—advice that would later save Vrba’s life—was to carry Russian tobacco that was drenched in petrol and dried, and to spread it all over himself. The smell, Volkov promised, would foil the tracker dogs.
After Volkov finished giving his lessons, the two men never spoke again. Why? Was Volkov carted off to a gas chamber? Vrba never knew. But he had other teachers as well. In January 1944, five other inmates, including one of Vrba’s Slovak friends, raced for freedom; they barely made it beyond Auschwitz. Within three hours, the SS had brutally killed them: they were shot with dumdum bullets that ripped their flesh to pieces. Their bodies, mutilated “beyond recognition,” were dragged to the camp and placed in chairs by the SS. Signs sadistically draped to their bodies proclaimed, “We’re back!”
It seemed as though Vrba’s plans lay in ruins. But then he linked up with Charles Unglick, a former captain in the French army, who had
fought bravely at Dunkirk. Unglick was one of those rare few at Auschwitz who seemed indestructible. Strong, wealthy, brazen, a “gangster” of a man, he managed to develop considerable influence in the camp, cowing the Kapos and bribing the SS. He bullied the Sonderkommando too. Unglick discovered that one of the SS guards was an orphan who had been raised by Yiddish-speaking Jews; soon, he devised an audacious scheme to pay off this guard with gold and diamonds taken from “Canada,” hidden beneath a plank in his barracks. In return, the guard would smuggle both Unglick and Vrba out, and they would make their way through enemy lines to Paris. Why would the guard do it? Vrba was suspicious. Unglick insisted that the guard harbored secret sympathy for the Jews.
They set the date of their escape as January 25, 1944, at 7 p.m., three days hence. Standing at roll call that night, as the wind swept through and the inmates shivered, Vrba could barely contain his excitement while he awaited his rendezvous with Unglick and the SS guard. His last roll call, he thought. Freedom. And help for the Jews who still remained outside Auschwitz.
Seven o’clock came and went. Then it was 7:05. Then 7:10. Then 7:15. Vrba had a terrible premonition that everything had gone awry. As luck would have it, while he torturously paced the ground, he was called to visit a man who was one of his “block seniors,” a noted Slovak intellectual. Vrba was so nervous he could barely think. Unsure what to do, he went to join the block senior, and they shared a bowl of goulash soup. As soon as Vrba returned outside to wait, another registrar ran to him, explaining that Unglick had been looking everywhere for him and badly wanted to see him.
Vrba raced back to the meeting point, but there was no Unglick, no lorry, no SS guard. Had they escaped? Back at Unglick’s room, he ripped up the loose plank in the floor, and saw that the bag of gold and diamonds was gone. But he had no way of knowing what had happened. And he realized that his opportunity had slipped away.
Vrba returned dazed and disillusioned to his block. He made distracted conversation, mumbling incomprehensibly to the other prisoners, until perhaps half an hour passed; it was somewhere around eight o’clock. Then a dreaded shout broke the night: “Block Senior Fourteen!” “Block Senior Fourteen!”
Partly in darkness, partly in the glare of the camp lights, Vrba stumbled to the courtyard of Block 14. His heart stopped. There lay Unglick’s body, with a single bullet hole in his chest, blood dripping all over his face and neck. Vrba hung his head. Not many lasting relationships were ever formed inside Auschwitz; few people lived long enough or had strength enough to cultivate them. But Vrba had given his friendship to Unglick. They had joked and dreamed together, and now he was devastated. As it turned out, the SS man had been playing Unglick all along; he simply pocketed the gold and diamonds, pumped a bullet through Unglick’s heart, and announced to the camp administration that he had thwarted an escape.
Staring at Unglick’s contorted body, Vrba was close to total despair. He had sought to cheat fate, but to no avail. Miraculously, he had survived the selection process. Miraculously, where countless thousands perished within weeks, he had survived Auschwitz’s cruelties. Yet now, what had seemed to be his best and perhaps his only chance had slipped away. With Unglick’s death, all of Vrba’s hopes died.
Overcome with sadness and smoldering anger, Vrba sought to steady himself, at first to no avail. But his desolation was short-lived, for in the weeks to come another opportunity would present itself.
VRBA’S NETWORK AT AUSCHWITZ included other friends, and one in particular: Fred Wetzler, who was also a registrar and who came from the same town as Vrba in Slovakia. Vrba believed he could trust Wetzler “implicitly.” Like Vrba, Wetzler was a rarity in Auschwitz. Twenty-five years old, he was immensely popular, even with the Germans. He had vast knowledge of the inner workings at Auschwitz, and seemed to know all the details of the camp. Vrba liked him and now was putting his life into Wetzler’s hands.
Wetzler’s plan for escape was unlike any other. Because the Nazis were expanding the camp to accommodate the influx of Hungarians, there was more chaos than normal. Wetzler learned from some fellow Slovaks about a large pile of wooden planks that had been stacked in the outer camp; this pile was, in effect, a specially prepared hideout amid the vast array of building material. Within the pile was a cavity, large enough to accommodate four people. The pile itself stood beyond the watchtowers and the electrified fences of the inner camp. So if one could securely remain unseen inside it for three days, then the search detail would be withdrawn. All that would remain was to race for safety. There was both madness and genius in this plan. Boldly, Vrba and Wetzler would be hiding in plain sight.
As it happened, four other Slovaks wanted to go first. To Vrba’s delight, they succeeded. The SS search was frantic, and it intensified daily. Yet after three days the Slovaks had not been discovered. Vrba and Wetzler decided they would wait two weeks, and then make a run for it themselves. But seven days later, their hopes were dashed when the SS returned with the badly beaten escapees. Vrba watched in silence as one by one the men were brutally tortured in public with leather whips, before being marched off for further interrogation. It was, Vrba reasoned, just a matter of time before the SS would break them and learn about the precious hiding place.
But Vrba and Wetzler still wanted to make sure.
Vrba managed to maneuver himself into the punishment block, where one of the prisoners whispered to him that they had not revealed the existence of the cavity.
Could they be trusted? Were the SS playing an elaborate game, as they had done so many times before? Vrba and Wetzler decided they had to take a chance.
THE WHOLE VENTURE WAS fraught with peril, but the details were quickly put in place. Vrba had a brief opportunity to study a map of the upper Silesian region, committing to memory a rough route for their escape; they would follow the Sola River and then they would trudge along the train tracks, the same tracks that carried car after car loaded with Jews. From the storage rooms in “Canada,” the two men had pilfered finely woven Dutch tweed jackets and overcoats, along with heavy boots and a white woolen sweater. They found the precious Russian tobacco, and carefully soaked it in petrol before drying it. Vrba had also managed to find a knife, which he squirreled away. They would bring bread and margarine as rations and a little vial of wine for liquid. Crucially, they also persuaded two other prisoners, both Poles, to slide the planks back over their heads once they slipped inside the woodpile. The logistic problems, they knew, were difficult. They also knew they would need stealth, luck, and impeccable timing. Fortitude too: for the first three days they risked discovery by the dogs.
The date they set was April 3, 1944, at two o’clock p.m., but they were foiled when a suspicious SS man stood outside the gate at Wetzler’s compound, and Wetzler sensibly refused to go.
THE NEXT DAY, APRIL 4, flying twenty-six thousand feet above Auschwitz, a South African pilot in a reconnaissance plane turned on his camera. He had taken off from the Allies’ air base at Foggia in southern Italy, and had flown due north. He was searching for bomb targets. As he guided his plane over this section of Upper Silesia, the camera clicked, taking twenty exposures of the Monowitz slave labor camp, where the IG Farben manufacturing plant was located. Just under three miles away from Monowitz were the death chambers at Auschwitz. On this same day, Auschwitz would receive a trainload of Jews from the northern Italian city of Trieste, still under German control. On board were 132 deportees. Of these, 103 were immediately sent to be gassed.
The photography took no more than a couple of minutes. The undeveloped film was then sent to the British Royal Air Force station west of London, where intelligence personnel developed it and studied the grainy pictures. They were looking for specific industrial installations that might be bombed. But as they examined the roll, three of the images showed rows of huts. These were the first known photographs of Auschwitz.
OVER FOUR MORE DAYS, Vrba and Wetzler tried and failed. Each time, they were foiled when something unexpected went wrong: an
accomplice was held up or there was a delay. Did the SS suspect something? Vrba and Wetzler had no way of knowing.
Finally, they resolved to make their break on April 7. That morning they went about their routine as if everything were normal. But once more in the early afternoon Vrba made his way toward the woodpile. All around, there was hammering and building, sweating and swearing, and chaos. Tense with fear, Vrba was suddenly surrounded by two SS men he had never seen before. They began commenting on his clothes, calling him a “tailor’s dummy.” True, as a registrar Vrba was an exception at Auschwitz, allowed to dress almost as he liked. Nevertheless, these Nazis objected to his coat, and haughtily began to rifle through his coat pockets, discovering a fistful of cigarettes. Vrba froze. Had his plan been foiled even before it began? Struggling to keep his composure, he began to sweat profusely. He knew if they opened up his coat, they would see his suit underneath. A deeper search would reveal the watch that he had stolen for the journey; at that moment, it was underneath his shirt, perilously pressing against his skin. If the watch alone was found, he would surely be executed for attempting to escape. And there were also the matches and knife that he had hidden.
