The Girl Who Escaped from Auschwitz: A totally gripping and absolutely heartbreaking World War 2 page-turner, based on a true story

by Ellie Midwood

  “What’s taking so long?”

  Both men jumped at the harsh shout in German.

  “Beg your forgiveness, Herr Rottenführer,” Edek muttered, injecting as much humility into his voice as possible. “We don’t want to make a quick job out of it. Winters are brutal here; we want to make sure we insulate it properly, so you stay snug and warm in there until spring.” At once, he began padding out the walls with a renewed vigor, Wiesław hammering eagerly after him.

  With an annoyed sigh, the guard turned away and began stomping his feet louder than before.

  “We’d better hurry,” Wiesław whispered in Polish. “That sod will catch a cold, but it’ll be us thrown into the Strafblock after he reports us.”

  “Let him freeze himself into pneumonia,” Edek replied with a sneer. “Lubusch will cover for us. And now, with the new Kommandant in charge—”

  He didn’t finish his thought. The guard had just shouted Halt at someone approaching and raised his arm, his left hand resting on his submachine gun that hung over his shoulder.

  “Heil Hitler,” a muffled voice greeted him half-heartedly.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Edek saw an SS man, his face nearly invisible in all the layers of scarf he was wearing, greeting his comrade with an arm bent at his elbow. Next to him, an inmate stood shivering. Unlike his SS escort in his warm long overcoat, all the prisoner was wearing was an old Soviet tunic with bullet holes in it and striped pants that were so short they left his ankles entirely exposed to the harsh elements. Edek saw that the skin on his face and above his mended short boots had already turned a dangerous shade of beet-red—the first warning sign of frostbite.

  “He’s a piano tuner,” the newly arrived guard mumbled from under the layers of his scarf, gesturing toward the trembling man. “I’m taking him to Höss’s house. Frau Höss has been complaining about the piano for weeks now; says she can’t entertain her guests properly.” He accompanied his words with an expressive roll of the eyes.

  Edek found it puzzling, the fact that the old Kommandant’s wife voluntarily chose to stay in Auschwitz instead of following her husband to wherever he had been transferred to. Rumor had it, her life here was so comfortable, she didn’t mind one bit the constant gut-churning, nauseatingly sweet smoke from the crematorium chimneys, as long as she had her personal slaves tending to her garden and Kanada detail supplying her with the latest fashion and precious stones brazenly confiscated from freshly murdered victims.

  “I’ll need an Ausweis for him,” the guard announced, tossing his head in the trembling inmate’s direction. “You know the rules—no pass, no strolls outside for his kind.”

  His SS comrade released an annoyed sigh. “Will you make me go all the way to the Kommandantur and go through the pain of authorizing a pass for one miserable Jew? Where’s your brotherly understanding?”

  “Oh, quit your moaning,” the guard countered, unimpressed. “It’s a safe bet this is the first time you ventured outside your work detail this winter and I have to stand here every other day. Where’s brotherly understanding in that?”

  A particularly harsh gust of wind picked up a handful of snow flurries and threw them with violence in the men’s faces. Even Edek, who was somewhat concealed by the walls of the booth, gulped a mouthful of icy air and felt his breath catching in his throat. The SS man swiftly swung round, pulling the scarf even higher over his face as he waited for nature’s attack to pass. The piano tuner next to him shifted fearfully from one foot to another and shut his eyes, with tears in them, against the elements.

  “Are you cold, my tender children?” the SS guard laughed mockingly. “Say your thanks you’re not on the Eastern front, freezing your fat tails off in one dugout or another while the Russkies are showering you with their new Katusha rockets.”

  “What do you know about that?” his comrade snapped back, turning around.

  “Enough to last me a lifetime.” The guard patted his thigh affectionately. “Still carrying splinters from that Soviet bitch in my leg.”

  “Declared unfit for frontline duty?” There was a measure of respect in the other’s voice now.

  “What can I say? At least I left that hell with all of my limbs still about me. The rest of my company wasn’t so fortunate.”

  The SS man with the scarf over his face stepped closer, speaking in a low, confidential tone while gesturing occasionally toward the inmate and the administrative building. After a pack of cigarettes traded hands, the two SS men appeared to have come to an understanding.

  Holding his breath, Edek watched the guard motion his comrade and the inmate through the gates. Soon, the two disappeared into the whitewashed day.

  At once, Edek dealt Wiesław a blow in the ribs.

  “Did you see that?” Edek whispered excitedly in Polish. “They just walked out of here. Heil Hitler and off they go, not even a proper paper check. Nothing!”

  “An SS uniform and German speech will do the trick.” Wiesław chuckled soundlessly.

  “So?” Edek refused to surrender.

  “So, we don’t have the first one and neither can we speak the second without our outrageous Polish accents.”

  “Some SS men here are Volksdeutsche Poles, Romanians, and Hungarians,” Edek argued. “From German settlements, but not quite perfect German speakers themselves. Could we not pass for such?”

  “With our Slavic mugs?”

  “They aren’t so Aryan either, if you saw them.”

  “You truly have it all worked out already, don’t you?” Wiesław demanded mockingly. “Where are you planning to get a uniform?”

  Edek didn’t reply straight away. He stared with infinite longing into the pristine white expanse that lay just outside the gates and into which the inmate and his SS escort had disappeared.

  “Lubusch,” he whispered at last.

  Wiesław nearly dropped his hammer with astonishment. “Our Lubusch? Kommandoführer Lubusch? SS Rottenführer Lubusch?”

  Edek shook his head. An uncertain grin began to spread on his face. “No. Edward Lubusch. A man who is married to a very nice Polish girl.”

  Wiesław may have been staring at him in confusion, but Edek was already working things feverishly in his mind, ridiculously hopeful and, once again, believing in miracles against his better judgement.

  The evening roll call was mercifully swift. Inside their barracks, an iron stove was cracking merrily. Needless to say, it wasn’t enough to warm the entire block, but it made men huddled around it feel somewhat human again, and that was already an achievement.

  “What a fireplace we had in our house in Lublin!” a former textile merchant said reminiscently, holding his calloused palms against the fire. “All green marble adorned with gold, wide and tall enough for a man to stand inside, when it wasn’t lit, of course… A dream!”

  Edek remembered him from the transport they had shared, as an imposing man in a three-piece suit, with a polished pin in his silk tie and a handsome watch with a golden face. The watch was the first item he had parted with; he had traded it for a mug of tepid water during one of their stops on the way to Auschwitz, handed to him through the narrow window by a local station worker. He could have never suspected that the stop was the first among many; by the time their transport pulled to the infamous Auschwitz ramp, he was no longer the man who had boarded it.

  But what truly broke him was a letter from his wife, in which she informed him in rather cool and formal tones that due to his racial status she had obtained a divorce to which his consent, as a Jew, was not needed, and assured him that his business was well-taken care of by her new fiancé, an Aryan businessman from Posen. The merchant received it only six weeks after his arrival. Something snapped in him and, soon, he had refused to accept reality, choosing to lose himself in the memories of the past, where his young wife, adorned with fragrant furs and drowning in diamonds, showered him with unrestrained affection, and where he was still the rightful owner of his house, in which the fireplace was so wide
and tall a man could stand in it.

  “What use do we have in that mythical fireplace?” It was the historian from a university, the name of which kept eluding Edek.

  “Let the man gossip about old times. What harm is it to you?” Edek said.

  “He’s exciting everyone else with empty illusions. As if we’ll ever come out of here.” The historian released a derisive snort and pushed his steel-rimmed glasses back onto the bridge of his nose.

  One of the men turned to stare at him, a young fellow from a good family who toyed with communist ideas far too much for the Germans’ liking. “Do you not think we will?” He searched the historian’s face. “What about the Soviets? People say they’re fighting already in Ukraine. Poland is next. Surely, as soon as they reach us, they shall liberate us and reinstate our rights—”

  From the historian, another burst of scornful laughter. “And you assume the SS shall just hand us all over to the Soviets?” He shook his head at such naiveté.

  “No. I assume they shall just leave us all here.”

  “Just leave us? Just leave all the witnesses to the crimes they have committed?” The historian gave him a pointed look. “Now, that would be the most inconceivably idiotic thing of them to do; do you not agree?”

  The young communist’s brow furrowed. “But then… What else would they…”

  It had then dawned on him; Edek could tell by the ashen-gray shade the young communist’s face had taken.

  “Surely, they won’t kill us all. I mean… the entire camp?”

  For a time, the historian gazed silently into the flames. Without his habitual scornful façade, he was an esteemed intellectual once again.

  “I have studied far too many wars and conflicts to nurse any illusions on the account of the Nazis,” he said at last. “Retreating armies have a tendency to annihilate everything in their wake. Stalin’s Scorched Land policy—I’ve learned this personally from the captured Red Army POWs—was the last example of this. Back in 1941, when the Red Army was still retreating, Stalin ordered his Commissars to raze every last village to the ground, contaminate every single water source, slaughter all livestock they couldn’t take with them. He didn’t do it to cover any crimes; he only ordered it so the enemy wouldn’t have any shelter or an evening meal. Now, imagine what the SS shall do when the Soviets approach our forsaken parts. Do you honestly believe that Hitler won’t give his men the same order? They’ll slaughter us all; mark my words. No one wants us to walk out of here and start telling our stories.”

  The young communist stared at him in mute horror, the silence of the barracks only confirming the grim prediction. Not a single person said anything against it. Everyone knew precisely it would be their fate.

  Later that night, Edek once again couldn’t sleep. The historian’s prophetic words wouldn’t let him.

  “He’s right,” Edek spoke into the darkness, knowing that Wiesław couldn’t sleep either. “They’ll off us all and raze the entire campsite to the ground.”

  “Thanks for more nightmares,” came Wiesław’s voice from the shadows.

  “I’m only saying, we don’t really have anything to lose.” Edek lifted himself on one elbow, his eyes gleaming about in the night. “If our fate is sealed regardless, we should try to at least do something about it. So we don’t die like meek sheep, but as men, who stood up for something.”

  “And what precisely is it we’re trying to stand up for?”

  “The most important thing there is. Freedom.”

  “I always thought the most important thing there was, was love.”

  Edek laughed, but then saw that his friend wasn’t joking.

  “You are a damned romantic after all,” he shook his head at Wiesław.

  For some time, they lay side by side amid soft snores and the howling of the wind outside the barracks walls.

  When Wiesław spoke again, it was the last thing Edek had expected: “Do you know anyone who could get us an empty Ausweis from the camp office?”

  Edek turned his head to look at him. Wiesław was staring at the bunk above, chewing on a strand of straw he’d pulled out of his pallet, his face pensive and earnest.

  “You’re with me then?” Edek whispered, still not quite believing it.

  “I can’t abandon you in your reckless enterprise, can I? What kind of a friend would that make me?”

  A head appeared then from the second-tier bunk. It was the historian.

  “You ought to get to Birkenau and ask for Mala. Mala Zimetbaum, Läuferin. She goes into the office all the time and, rumor has it, she’s the person to seek if you need something organized. She’ll get you your Ausweis, if you ask nicely.”

  He disappeared before they could thank him properly. Soon, Wiesław fell asleep and only Edek stayed wide awake, repeating the name to himself like a prayer.

  Mala.

  Mala Zimetbaum.

  His ticket to freedom.

  Six

  Birkenau

  Mala was sitting at the desk in the Schreibstube—the camp office—typing up Mandl’s handwritten orders. From time to time, a painful grimace creased her brow: the sheer number of grammatical errors was beyond belief. On her very first day here, Mala made the mistake of approaching the women’s camp leader to inquire if Lagerführerin wished for Mala to type up the orders as they were or to correct the misspellings first, and received a resounding slap for her insolence.

  “Which one of us is a native German speaker, you insolent sow?” Mandl had roared, thoroughly enraged. “Which one of us wears a uniform and gives orders here? I should have you shot for your long tongue where you stand!”

  Only Obersturmführer Hössler’s timely interference had saved Mala’s life. Mandl’s immediate superior had entered the office to investigate what the row was about, laughed heartily when Mandl tried to pour her grievances on him, and dismissed the matter with a negligent wave of his hand.

  “Everyone knows you can’t spell to save your life, Liebling.” The term of endearment seemed to appease Mandl. To Mala’s amazement, the leader of all wardens even blushed. “The girl is an interpreter and a secretary; let her do her job. That’s what she’s here for.” And, before Mandl remembered herself, he grabbed hold of Mala’s elbow and steered her, gently but firmly, out of the room, away from the SS woman’s wrath.

  Later that day, Zippy, a Slovak inmate who had arrived with one of the first transports and was much more camp-savvy than Mala, instructed her on the local rules: “Never, and I cannot stress it enough, never tell an SS woman, let alone Mandl, that she’s wrong in any way. Yes, they’re uneducated and barely literate for the most part, but if you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep your mouth shut and act as though they’re God’s gift to humankind.”

  “But these orders…” Mala had regarded the handwritten sheet, mortified. After she had left her position at Maison Lilian fashion house for a better paid and more prestigious one of linguist-secretary at a diamond company, she took particular pride in her superiors’ praise of her meticulous work. The more the administration commended her efforts, the longer she stayed after work, double- and triple-checking every single document as though the satisfaction of the international clients depended on her translation solely. The more foreign business newspapers and magazines she consumed, underlining and memorizing expressions she wasn’t familiar with and which would be useful for the company’s correspondence; the more business lunches she attended as her immediate boss’s interpreter, sacrificing days off and holidays simply because she wanted the company to be as successful as possible. Never in her life could she imagine that she would be slapped for her efforts, but that was the grim Auschwitz reality now. “If one official or the other reads them and sees this mess, they shall think it’s the inmate who typed them who’s at fault.” She’d looked at Zippy. “They’ll order me to the gas for not doing my job properly. Surely, Mandl won’t acknowledge that these are her mistakes?”

  “Naturally, she won’t. So you correct
everything and clean it up as much as you can; insert a few fancy words here and there to make her sound intelligent and enjoy a Red Cross parcel she may throw at you in gratitude when she gets a commendation from her higher-ups. Just don’t open your silly mouth and shove it into her face next time.” Zippy gave her a conspirator’s wink.

  Since then, endless months had followed one another in one bleak parade. Under Zippy’s guidance, Mala had become just as camp-savvy, and soon, Mandl began to approve of her and even openly praise her before her superiors. Before long, Mally was one of Mandl’s personal favorites, with her own room in the camp office, good clothes, decent food, and a number of privileges the rest of the inmates could only dream of. The necessity to show deference to someone she so thoroughly despised was sickening to Mala, but Zippy explained how such a position could be beneficial, not only for her personally but for people who could use some help—with an expressive look that Mala instantly understood—and soon, Mala joined forces with the brave men and women who refused to be turned into slaves and swore to die fighting instead.

  Lost in her memories, Mala gazed vacantly at the opposite wall, where Zippy ordinarily sat, and suddenly, such a deep longing for home, for freedom, came over her, she thought she would howl with grief.

  A commotion outside pulled her out of her dreary thoughts. Craning her neck, Mala recognized SS Rapportführerin Drexler—a right bitch, if she’d ever seen one, according to Zippy—shouting abuse at the women she had just chased out of the barracks and made to kneel in the snow. Her warm cape flying after her, the report overseer stalked along the rows of women—five abreast, the usual camp formation—and slashed her horsewhip at the faces of seemingly random victims. She was one of the most ruthless SS wardens in the entire Birkenau, known to shoot inmates just for “having the insolence” to look her in the eyes.

  Inside the camp office building, the windows were closed and thoroughly insulated and the radiators hissed loudly, pumping heat into the SS quarters, and yet, Mala still caught snatches of Drexler’s usual phrases. They didn’t change much throughout the years: “Dirty Israelite tramps… disgusting, filthy swine… I shall teach you how to… how many times have I warned you… ought to have cleaned out that pigsty the first time…”