The Auschwitz Escape

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  Jacob listened as the woman began to read.

  “‘Dearest Lara, I miss you terribly and long to be reunited with you, to see your face and hear your infectious laugh. Do not be sad for me, though. Life here at Auschwitz is hard but fair. I have a good job working in the bakery, though I wish I could remember your recipes for your famous Blechkuchen or your luscious Apfelkuchen.’”

  The very mention made Jacob’s mouth water for his mother’s own fabulous sheet cake and apple cake—and of course the strudel he loved so much.

  “‘Please pray for the war to be over soon and for Germany to be victorious,’” the letter continued. “‘I want to come back and see you and hear all about what you’re doing and the fun you’re having. Please give Mother and Father a kiss on the cheek for me. Tell them I miss them so. Yours for eternity, Marion.’”

  The woman evidently named Lara finished reading and kept staring at the page, but no one said a word.

  Embarrassed for her that she had been so vulnerable to a train car full of strangers, only to be ignored, Jacob thanked her and said how nice it would be for the two of them to be reunited.

  “Yes, yes,” the woman said, not seeming embarrassed in the slightest. “Still, it is a bit odd, I must say.”

  “Why is that?” Jacob asked.

  “It is peculiar—yes, that is the right word—it is peculiar that my sister would ask me to kiss our parents and tell them she misses them.”

  “That doesn’t seem so odd,” Jacob said.

  The woman turned and stared at him. “It wouldn’t be if our parents were alive and well. But they died in a house fire seventeen years ago.”

  The shock of what she said caused Jacob to physically pull back from her. He could hardly imagine feeling more ill at ease than he already did, but something in what she said triggered a wave of revulsion inside him.

  But before he could understand why he felt this way or ask her about the discrepancy, a gray-haired woman bundled up in a lovely fur coat suddenly sat up and spoke for the first time. “I, too, received a letter.”

  Jacob looked over at her. “What is your name, ma’am?”

  “I’m Mrs. Brenner,” the woman said. “Just before Chanukah, the police arrested my husband for not wearing his yellow star. He’d simply gone outside to fetch a bottle of milk. He didn’t think he needed to wear the star then. An officer was walking by, and he started yelling and beating him without mercy. I came running from the house to see what was happening, only to find blood streaming from my poor husband’s head and hands. Before I knew it, he was put in chains and taken away. And then in January, they sent him to Poland, to this place called Auschwitz.”

  Everyone in the car now was riveted to Mrs. Brenner’s story. Jacob knew they all had loved ones who had suddenly disappeared, snatched off the streets, never to be seen again. And now each had his or her own personal story of being arrested, given no trial, given barely enough food and water to survive, and now being thrown into a cattle car and moved across the continent with no idea what really lay ahead.

  “I got a letter just ten days ago,” Mrs. Brenner said, coming to the point of her story. “My husband said he was fine, adjusting well, eating well, making friends, and so forth. He told me how much he cared for me and longed to see me—everything I wanted and needed to hear. We’ve been married thirty-two years, my Otto and me, and . . .”

  Now her eyes filled with tears. She put her hand over her trembling lips, and to Jacob it seemed she was trying desperately not to suffer the humiliation of weeping in front of complete strangers.

  “. . . this is the first time we have ever been apart from each other for so long,” she said after regaining a measure of control and wiping her eyes.

  Then she pulled his letter out from her handbag.

  “But this is the part I found odd,” she said as she donned a pair of reading glasses and scanned the piece of stationery until she found the exact line. “Yes, here. He writes, ‘I am terribly sorry I was not there for your birthday. Please forgive me. Has there ever been a February 9 that I wasn’t there? I will make it up to you, my love. In the meantime, buy yourself something nice and tell yourself it’s from me. And then ask Madeline to take you out for tea and make a day of it. Live it up. Life is short. But you are worth it.’”

  She stopped and stared at the page, and tears began to well up once again. She dabbed them with a pink handkerchief and took several deep breaths, then looked up and turned to the woman named Lara.

  “Madeline was our daughter, our only daughter,” Mrs. Brenner explained. “But she died while I was giving birth to her. And that was twenty-six years ago. It was the most devastating period of my life. Our marriage almost ended. Why on earth would Otto bring up such a painful memory—and do it so disrespectfully? It makes no sense, and I’ve been haunted by it ever since. And now I hear your letter, and it sounds as strange as my own.”

  Jacob suddenly remembered something bizarre that Maurice Tulek had told him and Avi a few weeks before. Morry had received a letter from his brother, Pascal, a revered member of the Resistance, who had been arrested and sent to a camp. Jacob couldn’t remember if Pascal had been sent to Auschwitz or Treblinka or Bergen-Belsen or some other camp, but the point was that Morry had been thrilled to hear from Pascal, thrilled to know he was alive and even allowed to write letters. But Morry had been troubled by the postscript his brother had written: “Please visit Mother and Father and tell them I’m so sorry and that I love them dearly.” When Avi had asked what was so troubling about that, Morry said their parents had been dead for nearly a decade.

  At this point, the car was filled with the sounds of other people fishing their own letters out of billfolds and pocketbooks and comparing them with one another. It soon became evident that nearly everyone in the car had received such a letter, including Mr. Eliezer. All of them contained these strange anomalies. Everyone was talking about why their friends and relatives would say things so odd and disturbing in the midst of otherwise kind and heartfelt correspondence.

  Deeply troubled, Jacob, too, pondered the mystery. He slowly moved through the car, eager to overhear what the others were saying and asking questions now and again.

  And then he knew.

  “They’re warnings,” he said aloud.

  “What do you mean?” asked a middle-aged man in the back of the car.

  “Your friends, your neighbors, your loved ones, they’re sending you—they’re sending all of us—a warning,” Jacob said, trying to keep his voice calm and steady though his heart was pounding and he felt gripped by a new wave of fear. “The Nazis forced them to write those letters, to say that they were fine, that all was okay. But what’s the theme of the anomalies you’re describing? They’re all references to people you know who have long since died. The guards at the camps, they must read all these letters. They’re no doubt on alert for any language that could give people on the outside a true sense of what’s happening inside these concentration camps. But the guards would have no way of knowing the people mentioned in these letters are dead. To them, it must all seem like perfectly normal language, so the letters are cleared. But your loved ones are sending you coded messages. They’re telling you that all is not well. They are not fine. And they’re warning us not to come.”

  Mrs. Brenner gasped. So did others. Some scoffed and told Jacob he was crazy. But for most, his analysis rang true.

  Jacob knew in his heart that he was right. The rumors were true. They were headed to a death camp. And they would not be coming out.

  30

  “To sleep, perchance to dream . . .”

  As the train continued its monotonous journey toward southern Poland, Jacob found himself awake earlier than most, surprised he had slept through the night. Anxiety and thirst had, in the end, given way to exhaustion, and not just for him but for everyone in his car.

  He had dreamed for the first time in months, and in his dream he had asked Naomi Silver to go to the movies with him, and t
o his astonishment, she had said yes. Now, as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes, the faint whisper of a smile was still on his lips. He could still vividly see the navy-blue dress she was wearing, the one with the small white polka dots. It was the dress she had worn the last time he’d seen her walking into shul, the last time she’d smiled shyly at him. He hoped the others were dreaming of something just as pleasant. He hoped they all had a place to escape and hide when the demons came.

  Checking his watch, he was surprised to see it was nearly seven in the morning. It was Thursday, April 22, and if his calculations were correct, they would be arriving in the next few hours.

  He thought about Uncle Avi. Was he alive? Had he somehow survived the multiple gunshot wounds Jacob had helplessly watched him receive? Was it possible Micah and Henri and Jacques had been able to get him to safety and even now were nursing his wounds and saving his life?

  And what of them? Had any of them survived the gun battle? Were they now safely on their way to England? Or were they dead, their bodies still lying beside the railroad tracks?

  And what of all the others, the prisoners they had set free? How many had made it off the train, and what had become of them?

  Soon those around Jacob began waking up as well. Some used the bucket in the corner to relieve themselves while others graciously created a cordon around them, providing a slim measure of privacy. When Mr. Eliezer awoke, he fished through his luggage and gave Jacob several pieces of matzo and an apple.

  “It’s all I had in the house when they came to get me,” he said.

  Jacob was deeply grateful, and they blessed it and ate it together.

  Some of the folks in the car, Jacob noticed, had clearly been arrested and beaten and given little or no notice that they were being sent to a slave-labor camp. Like him, they had no luggage, no trunks filled with personal possessions, no food or other provisions. Others on the train seemed as if they were going on holiday to the country for the summer. That was certainly the case with Lara and Mrs. Brenner. They had several trunks each and more food than anyone else. Jacob didn’t pretend to know how such differences in preparation had come about, but he was heartened in no small way to see those with food and other provisions being so generous to those without.

  Lara, for example, had a big basket of cookies she had baked herself, and she readily shared them with anyone who wanted one. To Jacob, in fact, she gave two, insisting he needed to put “some meat on his bones” and thanking him for letting so many escape. She told him she had been planning to take the cookies to a wedding, but when the Gestapo came for her, they said she had only ten minutes to gather whatever she needed.

  Jacob looked at the men and women around him. Some read books they had brought with them, though there wasn’t much light, even well after the sun rose. Others tended to their knitting or played cards or tic-tac-toe or other games on the train walls.

  In time, however, they all heard the piercing shriek of the train whistle and felt the train begin to slow. This was it, Jacob realized. They had arrived.

  31

  APRIL 22, 1943

  AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU CONCENTRATION CAMP, POLAND

  What Jacob saw overwhelmed him.

  He stood peering through the small, thin opening at the top of the door. Before him was a sprawling complex, surrounded by barbed-wire fences and enormous guard towers with soldiers aiming .50-caliber machine guns and sniper rifles at them. Just ahead were row upon row of three-story brick buildings that looked like army barracks or dormitories. In the distance, he saw an enormous smokestack, several stories high. Thick, black, acrid smoke was belching out of it, and occasionally flames shot out of the top as well. The building below it seemed too small to be a factory of any kind, and Jacob wondered what in the world it was.

  Before he knew it, the side door of the car was opening, and he and the others were blinded by a flood of sunshine they hadn’t truly seen or experienced in nearly three days. To Jacob’s shock, he thought he heard music—a Viennese waltz, no less.

  As Jacob’s eyes adjusted, he could see heavily armed soldiers shouting at them. They were demanding everyone leave their belongings behind and move rapidly onto the platform and down the wooden ramp. There, they were split into two groups—men on one side, women on the other. Those who dallied were immediately clubbed by the soldiers, who were continuously spewing vile obscenities. And then, sure enough, behind the soldiers, down in the courtyard, Jacob actually spotted a small orchestra, including a whole string section, playing the most beautiful music as if everything were well and they were all on holiday.

  Jacob grabbed Mr. Eliezer’s hand and pulled him to his feet and toward the door.

  “My bag,” the old man cried.

  “Leave it,” snapped a guard, who used a truncheon to bash the old man in the ribs.

  Jacob’s blood boiled. His hand balled up in a fist, but Mr. Eliezer quickly recovered and insisted he was all right. The guard moved farther into the train car to beat others, and as he did, Mr. Eliezer now took the lead, pulling Jacob toward the rest of the crowd, where they fell in line behind the others who had disembarked first.

  “Play the game, my son,” he whispered, “or you won’t make it to lunch.”

  Jacob said nothing. He did as he was told, but his instincts and training prompted him to start wondering about escape. The Nazi show of force, however, made any such notion seem far-fetched at best. The easiest way out, presumably, would have been to stow away on the trains they’d just arrived on, but that was clearly impossible. The cattle cars were being thoroughly searched by armed guards and dogs, even as men arrived to remove the luggage, packages, and personal effects and then clean and disinfect each car and put fresh hay on the floors.

  Heavily armed soldiers were everywhere. There were hundreds of them. And now, as Jacob looked more carefully, he noticed there was not just one barbed-wire fence ringing the perimeter but two. Even if a prisoner could break free and get over—or under—the first fence without getting shot, there was no way he could get over or under the next fence before being shredded by bullets.

  Jacob’s attention shifted to more pressing matters at hand. Why in the world were they being sorted? The single-file lines moved steadily, but Jacob and Mr. Eliezer were near the back, and with hundreds of people ahead of them, the process took a while. At the head of the line were two men wearing lab coats—doctors?—each carrying a clipboard and flanked by several assistants. One set focused on the men, the other on the women. Beside them were two men in uniforms, one of whom seemed to be making all the decisions.

  The man directed some people to the right. Others he directed to the left. Anyone standing in the line who dared to speak was ordered to be beaten without mercy. Anyone who didn’t stand perfectly still was beaten. Any man who so much as glanced over at the women was beaten—not simply tapped or swatted but savagely struck again and again and again. As Jacob watched, at least a dozen men and two women were beaten to death, one within just a few meters of his position. He had seen death over the past few years, even close-up, but never anything like this. He stared aghast as bizarre, emaciated men wearing black-and-white striped clothes and matching striped hats emerged out of nowhere. They gathered up the broken, bloodied bodies, stacked them on a cart like they were cords of wood, and wheeled the cart around a corner and out of sight.

  Jacob felt sick to his empty stomach, but he forced himself not to vomit, afraid this might trigger a beating. Fearful of looking to the left or the right, he looked up and let himself be distracted by the weather. It was, he couldn’t help but notice, quite a lovely day, in particularly stark contrast to the mood and the moment. The southern Polish skies were a bright and dazzling blue. There wasn’t a cloud in sight, and the spring sun was warm and friendly on his face. A slight breeze made the flags with the swastika rustle and clang on their poles every now and again and also felt, dare he say, refreshing.

  At least he wasn’t boiling or freezing. But Jacob’s intense thirst wa
s now growing painful. Aside from the juices of the apple Mr. Eliezer had given him on the train, Jacob hadn’t put any liquids in his mouth since Monday evening before they’d left for the mission, and he was now feeling the effect. Still, he was young and strong and determined to maintain a brave composure in the face of the evils that now awaited him. He wondered how much longer the elderly and infirm were going to hold up under such conditions. Surely they would be given food and water now that they had arrived. How else could they be useful slaves in a slave-labor camp?

  Suddenly the direction of the wind shifted, and Jacob picked up a whiff of an odor more foul than anything he had ever experienced before.

  It was smoke, but not ordinary smoke. This wasn’t the scent of burning wood or leaves or even trash. What was it? he wondered. Where was it coming from? Perhaps, he thought, it was from the giant smokestack he had seen earlier.

  32

  With every step forward, Jacob’s trepidation increased.

  He was nearing the front of the line, with his “father” right behind him. The orchestra was now playing an upbeat piece Jacob recognized as being from The Bartered Bride. Once again he tried desperately to resist the urge to vomit.

  What if the camp guards knew he wasn’t Leonard Eliezer? What if they knew exactly who he was? Or what if they at least suspected him of not telling the truth? What if they interrogated him? He had spent hours memorizing every fact and detail Mr. Eliezer had taught him about his son. But now he felt flustered, and his stomach ached in fear.

  As he edged closer to the front of the line, Jacob could now see the uniformed man in charge very clearly. He was of average height and build, with short dark hair and a sturdy jaw, a patrician nose, and cold, dark eyes. He stood completely still, his head cocked back slightly, his chest puffed out. Considering how deferentially everyone was treating him, Jacob concluded he had to be the camp commander. He hadn’t interrogated anyone yet. But this man clearly had the power of life and death in his hands. Jacob had already seen him order men and women beaten to death and watch without flinching. What else was he capable of? Jacob wondered.