The Auschwitz Escape

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  Jacob wasn’t finished with the first, but when Abe jotted down the measurements he needed for both men and slid it over to him, he decided not to ask any more about the second team. Instead he turned to the “Abby question”—could she be the second member of his team? But no sooner was the first sentence out of his mouth than both men said an emphatic no.

  “Absolutely not,” Otto said.

  “Out of the question,” Abe agreed.

  “Now, look,” Jacob said. “I really—”

  “No,” Otto interjected forcefully. “No, period. End of sentence. Look, we can see that you like her—”

  “No, no, that’s not it,” Jacob insisted, shaking his head, but Otto would have none of it.

  “Jacob, we’re not fools. We get it—you like her. And believe me, we’re sympathetic. But Abby would be a distraction and thus a serious liability. She would slow you down. At best, you’d spend more time thinking about how to protect her than how to reach your objective. At worst, you’d spend all your time thinking about how to get her to marry you, and you wouldn’t be concentrating effectively on not getting caught and reaching your goal.”

  “Which is this, and only this: warning the Jewish leaders in Hungary,” Abe chimed in.

  “Besides, we’ve already chosen someone for you,” Otto said matter-of-factly.

  “Who?”

  Otto leaned forward and whispered in Jacob’s ear. “Jean-Luc Leclerc.”

  “No way,” Jacob shot back.

  “What do you have against Luc?” Otto asked.

  “Nothing,” Jacob insisted. “He’s a fine man, but I want a Jew, not some goy pastor.”

  “Well, it’s not your call,” Otto said firmly. “It’s ours.”

  “It’s my life,” Jacob said.

  “It’s our mission,” Abe replied. “If you don’t want in, we’ll find someone else. But we’re not having a debate. You’re escaping with Luc, or you’re not going at all.”

  65

  For most of March, Jacob strained to gather all three sets of supplies.

  He focused on completing the list of items for the first escape kit, as ordered, though he took advantage of opportunities to collect supplies for the next two kits as well. He worked without complaining. And also without talking to Jean-Luc Leclerc about the mission. Otto and Abe didn’t want to argue with Jacob over his teammate. They had made the choice, and it was final. But they also didn’t want Jacob arguing with Jean-Luc Leclerc or urging him to drop out. They didn’t even want him brainstorming about the mission. They just wanted Jacob to focus on his job of gathering everything that was needed in the very short time frame they had. Everything else was off-limits.

  On the evening of March 25, the three gathered again after supper in an empty bunk room in Camp D. Jacob explained that he wasn’t sure he would have everything together in one week’s time, but he was still trying. At the moment, they had no backpacks and no shoes that would fit Otto. It was taxing his patience, but Jacob insisted that he was doing everything he could to finish on time. He simply couldn’t be certain. Otto assured him he was doing fine.

  “It’ll all work out,” Abe added calmly.

  “How?” Jacob said, his nerves growing raw.

  “I have no idea,” Abe conceded. “It just will. We’ve survived this far. I think God is letting us live for a reason: so we can escape and warn our brothers.”

  Jacob wasn’t sure about that, but this was no time to argue. Not about theology, anyway. But there was another issue he needed to bring up.

  “I need to talk to you about Luc—” he began, but Abe cut him off.

  “I know, I know—you think we need to let Luc know he’s going to be on your team,” Abe said. “But it’s still too soon. Luc has enough on his plate at the moment. He doesn’t have the same freedom of time or movement we do. He can’t gather supplies, scout out possible escape points, or meet together like this and refine plans. Let Luc do his work, and let us do ours. He’s a good man. He’s been very willing to do everything we’ve asked him thus far, and he hasn’t asked for anything in return. Not for special privileges or food. Not to join us in getting out. Not for anything. You can’t ask for more.”

  “I wish we had a thousand Lucs,” Otto said.

  Jacob explained that he had no dispute with anything they had said thus far. It was all true. Luc was hardworking and loyal and never complained. He had saved Jacob’s life several times and had introduced him to Abby. And his record of saving Jews in France was beyond compare. Jacob would be forever grateful. There was just one problem.

  “He’s not Jewish,” Jacob said.

  “So what?” Abe asked.

  “Yeah, so what?” Otto echoed. “What’s your point?”

  “My point is that we’re Jews,” Jacob said. “The people the Nazis are trying to kill most are Jews. The Hungarians we’re trying to warn are Jews. We need a Jew to talk to Jews.”

  “You’re wrong,” Abe said.

  “I’m not,” Jacob said. “At least Abby is Jewish. This guy is blond, blue-eyed—for crying out loud, he looks like an Aryan. How in the world are we going to get the Jewish council in Hungary to trust him?”

  “That’s not why we chose him,” Otto said.

  “Then why?” Jacob pressed.

  Otto looked at Abe. There was a long pause.

  “I guess it’s time we tell you,” he said.

  “Tell me what?” Jacob asked.

  “Luc is a man of connections.”

  “Connections?” Jacob asked, the cynicism in his voice barely concealed. “He’s a pastor—an assistant pastor. He doesn’t have any connections. He’s told me that himself.”

  “He’s just being modest,” Otto said. “He actually couldn’t be more highly connected.”

  “How?”

  “His grandfather used to be the French ambassador in Washington.”

  “Ambassador?” Jacob said, incredulous.

  “Right.”

  “So just to be clear,” Jacob said, “you think the chief rabbi of Budapest is going to listen to this man—this goy, this pastor—just because he’s the grandson of a French diplomat?”

  “No,” Otto replied calmly. “I think the chief rabbi of Budapest is going to listen to Abe and me. If we get caught or killed, I hope he’ll listen to Judah and Milos. And if they get caught or killed, then I hope he’ll listen to you.”

  “Then why bring Luc?” Jacob asked. “Why not Abby—or Josef, for that matter?”

  “Because the goal here isn’t simply getting to the chief rabbi of Budapest,” Otto said. “Look, Jacob. We’ve thought a lot about this. And we’ve concluded that if we get out—if any of us get out, and hopefully if all of us get out—we cannot simply talk to our fellow Jews. Yes, that’s critically important. We have to warn them not to get on the trains. But that’s not enough. We cannot just talk to Jewish leaders. Because what, in the end, can they really do? We need to get to decision makers. We need to get to the Allies. At the highest possible levels. We need to convince Churchill and Roosevelt and their closest advisors to take action. Decisive action. Action the Jewish communities cannot take for themselves.”

  “Like liberating Auschwitz?” Jacob asked.

  “Sure, if they can,” Abe said.

  Jacob was confused. “And if they can’t?”

  “Then bomb the railroad tracks leading here,” Abe said.

  Then Otto added, “And if that’s not enough . . .” His words trailed off mysteriously.

  “And if that’s not enough, then what?” Jacob asked.

  There was a long pause. Neither Otto nor Abe would look him in the eye.

  “Then what?” Jacob pressed again.

  “Then we want them to bomb Auschwitz,” Otto said at last.

  Jacob was stunned. “What did you just say?”

  “You heard him,” Abe said.

  “Bomb Auschwitz?” Jacob asked.

  “And Birkenau,” Abe said. “The gas chambers and the ovens.”
>
  Jacob was incredulous.

  “But . . . but . . . so many people . . . so many would die,” he stammered.

  “They’re dying already,” Otto said. “Think of how many more would be saved.”

  Jacob shook his head, pushed away from the table, and stood. “No,” he said. “That’s not right. We want them to liberate us, not bomb us.”

  “Of course we want them to liberate us,” Abe said. “But what if that’s not possible? What if they can’t spare the troops? Think about it, Jacob. We’re deep in enemy territory. It might be impossible to get to us unless or until the Allies win the war. But even if that happens—and I pray to God every night that it does—it could take years. Look how long we’ve already been here. Look how many have died. Hitler’s clearly trying to liquidate the entire Jewish race. Give him a few more years, and he just might do it. No, we can’t wait that long. If the Allies can’t liberate the camps, then they need to destroy them.”

  Jacob was pacing now, trying to make sense of all this. Otto stood, walked over to him, and put his hand on his shoulder.

  “We’ve thought through every possible scenario,” he said calmly. “Believe me, if there were another way, we’d be all for it. But each of us has to know—beyond the shadow of a doubt—what we’re going to say to any government official we get the chance to talk to when we get out of here. And we all have to be singing from the same song sheet. We all need the same message. And when we’re free, and when God opens the door for us to meet with world leaders—and I know he will—then we need to repeat our message again and again and again until they listen and until they act.”

  Abe now stood as well and walked over to them.

  “That’s why we need Luc on this team. The people making the decisions in London and Washington, do you think they’re Jewish? They’re not. They’re Christians. Oh, they’re not all as devout and religious as Jean-Luc, but believe me, he speaks their language. The fact that he’s a Gentile—a goy, as you put it—that helps us. The fact that he’s blond and blue-eyed, even better. He’s one of them. But he’s also one of us. He’s seen what we’ve seen. He can speak to them. He can convince them of what’s happening here and of the need to take strong, fast, decisive action. And we think the fact that Luc will be able to reconnect with his grandfather will come in very handy in opening doors to the decision makers at the White House and in Congress and in the State Department and the War Department. If anyone can convince them to do something serious before it’s too late, it’s him.”

  “Don’t fight us on this, Jacob,” Otto said. “It’s a decision we’ve come to in close consultation with the leadership of the underground throughout the camps. Believe me, we’ve all agonized over this, but this is where we’ve come out. What we’re asking you to do is to carry out orders, not give new ones. Can we count on you for that? Can we trust you to execute our plan, no matter what the cost?”

  Jacob looked both men in the eye and sighed. He didn’t agree. He didn’t want to escape with a Protestant minister at his side, even someone like Jean-Luc Leclerc. But Steinberger and Frenkel were in charge.

  Jacob knew that if he refused to submit, they might very well give the chance to escape to someone else, and he could not let that happen under any circumstances. He was torn. Already he had almost completed his immediate task. He had gathered nearly all the supplies Steinberger and Frenkel needed and most of two other full sets as well. But he was rattled by the decisions his superiors were making and asking him to make. Actually, rattled didn’t even capture it.

  Jacob remained silent as he stewed over the things his overseers had said. It was bad enough that they wouldn’t let him choose the person he would risk his life with to escape. But did they really have the gall to suggest that they were going to ask Churchill and Roosevelt to bomb Auschwitz-Birkenau?

  Here he was, taking enormous risks to help them escape, only to have them say they would recommend that the British and the Americans bomb concentration camps filled with Jews? It was ludicrous. It was beyond ludicrous. It was madness. The point was to stop the Nazis from killing Jews, not to persuade FDR and Churchill to do it for the Nazis. What was wrong with these men? How could they be so cold?

  He tried to consider the other side. Was it really fair to think so poorly of Steinberger and Frenkel? They weren’t idiots. They weren’t fools. And they certainly weren’t cowards. They had more than proven their courage to save Jewish lives at grave risk to their own. What’s more, they had pinned a lot of hopes on the notion that if Leszek Poczciwinski—aka Piotr Kubiak—could escape, then the liberation of the camps would happen soon. But it hadn’t happened as they had hoped. There were any number of possible reasons for that. Maybe Leszek never made it safely back to the Polish Resistance. But maybe it was because though he did, no one had the time or the resources or perhaps the interest to wage a brutal military campaign to liberate one camp, much less dozens. They were deep behind enemy lines. They were far from any Allied strongholds. Maybe the operation would end up like the one to liberate train 801—a well-meaning, good-hearted effort and a partial success, but in the end a failure. Maybe Steinberger and Frenkel knew something he didn’t. And Jacob had to admit that there wasn’t time for any more well-meaning, good-hearted failures.

  One thing was certain: the Nazi death machine had to be stopped once and for all. That would necessitate dramatic, decisive action. If the death camps were obliterated by Allied air strikes, then many Jews would die. That was the hard truth, and Steinberger and Frenkel knew it all too well. But then what would happen? The killings would stop, would they not? Then the Nazis would have no way to systematically annihilate the rest of the Jews of Europe. Would Hitler have the time or the money or the manpower to rebuild the death camps amid the rest of his all-consuming war operations? Maybe not, even if he retained the motive. And Jacob began to wonder if perhaps Steinberger and Frenkel were right after all.

  “Okay,” he said finally, resigning himself to their authority. “I’m in.”

  66

  APRIL 5, 1944

  Two weeks later the team met again.

  This time, however, Steinberger and Frenkel decided to invite Luc to attend as well.

  Jacob privately resented the notion that these men would include Luc without discussing it with him first. After all, any meeting significantly increased the risk of all four of them being discovered and arrested. Jacob felt that was a decision they should evaluate carefully and in consultation. What’s more, Jacob secretly wanted to limit the amount of specific information Luc had about the escape plan. The less Luc knew in terms of operational details, the easier it could be for Jacob to replace him with a different partner after Steinberger and Frenkel had escaped. They couldn’t well stop him from making his own decisions once they were gone. Yet it was becoming clear that neither Steinberger nor Frenkel was prepared to surrender leadership to Jacob before their departure. They had been insistent on Jean-Luc Leclerc’s being Jacob’s partner, and they weren’t about to change their minds now.

  “Mr. Leclerc, so good that you could join us,” Otto said, giving the Frenchman a warm embrace and directing him to take a seat in the cramped bunkhouse quarters.

  “I’m honored to be here,” Luc replied. “I was surprised to be invited.”

  Jacob said nothing.

  “The three of us have been deeply impressed by your character, your hard work, your team spirit, and your bravery,” Abe said. “We know the history of your work back home in France, that you’ve risked your life to rescue innocent Jews from Hitler’s clutches, and we are all grateful for this.”

  “How could I do any less?” Luc said quietly.

  “Many in your position have done far, far less,” Abe said.

  Steinberger and Frenkel then looked to Jacob. It took a moment to realize what his comrades were doing, but Jacob quickly cleared his throat and picked up where they left off.

  “We’ve discussed it thoroughly, and we’ve considered a number of
candidates, but at my request, Otto and Abe have agreed with me that we should invite you to be on my escape team,” Jacob said, looking Luc square in the eye. “It will be an enormous risk, and I cannot guarantee your safety. To the contrary, the likelihood is high of being shot to death or hanged. But the mission is important. We have to get word of what is happening here to the Jewish council in Budapest and then to the Allies in London and Washington. And I think you’d be a great asset. I’d be honored to have you as my partner. What do you say?”

  It wasn’t an entirely truthful statement, of course. But it made no sense to communicate his doubts. After all, it wasn’t that Jacob had something personal against Luc. He had simply wanted a fellow Jew, pure and simple. But he had been overruled. Pure and simple. Now it was time to unify and focus intently on the mission ahead.

  Jacob was grateful to Steinberger and Frenkel for giving him the opportunity to make the invitation directly to Luc. It allowed Jacob to set the tone for the relationship, to assert himself as the team leader even though he was the younger partner, and to signal his confidence in Luc, something that would be absolutely vital for success if they were really going to put their lives in each other’s hands.

  Luc was visibly taken aback by the question. “I—I’m not sure what to say,” he stammered.

  It was clear Luc had not come to the meeting expecting to be invited on such an assignment, and Jacob found himself encouraged by that. It was a good sign, he thought, that Luc didn’t feel entitled to be on one of the escape teams but simply wanted to help his fellow prisoners. It spoke volumes about his motives, and thus his character.