The soldier sensed his moment. He returned fire, taking out the barn window immediately over Jacob’s head, raining shards of broken glass down on him.
This time Jacob didn’t stand up. Instead he raised the submachine gun over his head, pointed into the far left corner of the barn, and unleashed two long bursts. Now his magazine was empty. It took him a moment to figure out how to eject it and several seconds more to figure out how to load a full magazine, and in this time the Nazi fired three more long bursts.
Suddenly Jacob shrieked in pain. He’d been hit by something in the left leg. For the moment, he couldn’t tell if it was broken glass or a bullet that had ricocheted off the truck or the back wall, but it hurt like nothing Jacob had ever experienced before. It was a hot, searing pain that set his entire left leg on fire. But Jacob was determined not to die in a crouched position, defensive, taking fire. If this was really it, he was going down swinging.
When he heard the Nazi reloading a second time, he gritted his teeth and forced himself to his feet. Limping now toward the back of the barn, Jacob fired a long burst into the corner of the loft, forcing the soldier into a crouch. A moment later, Jacob was at the other end of the barn, under the loft and out of the view of the soldier above him. Now Jacob had the advantage, and he used it. He aimed straight up and pulled the trigger. In less than six seconds, he had completely emptied his last magazine. But he had also hit his target and could hear the Nazi screaming in agony until at last he was no more.
Just then the man in the leather coat ripped open the main barn doors and started firing his submachine gun.
Jacob instantly dropped to the ground and scrambled for cover against the front of the pickup truck. Then he tossed aside his empty submachine gun and pulled one of the pistols from his pocket. Looking underneath the carriage of the truck, Jacob could see the man moving to the left. So Jacob moved to the right. He thought about trying to shoot out the man’s legs but knew he was not a good-enough shot. Plus, he had limited ammunition and no time to reload.
This was it. He had one chance to take this guy out, or he was a dead man. The problem was that Jacob’s left leg was in the most excruciating pain he could possibly imagine. He was growing dizzy and feared he could soon go into shock and black out. He had to shoot first. He had to make something happen, and fast.
The first thing he did was change his mind. He fired two shots from underneath the truck. He wasn’t expecting to hit the man, but he hoped it would throw him off-balance and confuse him, and that’s exactly what it did. The officer went scrambling backward, and Jacob forced himself to his feet again. Even as he himself screamed in pain, he fired four rounds at the officer in rapid succession.
At least one of them hit its mark. The man reeled around and went flying back against the wall, hollering in pain.
Limping forward as rapidly as he could, Jacob kept firing until the pistol was out of bullets. His tactical goal wasn’t to kill the man but to keep him from regaining his focus and firing back.
For the moment, at least, he had achieved his objective. The man was on the ground, wallowing in blood from a gaping wound to his left shoulder.
As Jacob came around the rear of the truck, he had a clear shot at the man’s back. But as he pulled out the second Luger and squeezed the trigger, nothing happened. The gun didn’t fire. Panicking, now fully exposed, Jacob quickly checked the safety, but it was off. He aimed and tried to fire again, but again the pistol would not fire, and then Jacob realized that he had no functioning weapon and no way to run for cover or back to the house, where he knew more weapons were.
With no other options, Jacob did the only thing he could. He lunged for the man and began beating him with his fists, beginning with the wound in his shoulder.
At first the officer was caught off guard, and then he was nearly incapacitated by the blows to his shoulder, but this trained killer quickly rediscovered his instincts and landed a crushing punch to Jacob’s left leg.
Now the tables were reversed. The man’s submachine gun had been inadvertently kicked out of reach, but he rolled Jacob over, grabbed him by the throat, and began to squeeze the life out of him. Jacob gasped for air and struggled to break free. But the man was taller and heavier and fitter.
And then, in the thick of the enraged battle, Jacob finally saw the man’s face. It was Von Strassen.
As each man realized who the other was, they were both temporarily stunned. For a few split seconds, Von Strassen eased his grip. Jacob made the most of it. He brought up his knee hard and fast into the man’s groin. Then he landed another blow on Von Strassen’s profusely bleeding shoulder, instantly loosening the man’s death grip. Jacob was able to scramble away, but because his own leg was in so much pain, he was moving too slowly.
He couldn’t run. He couldn’t flee. Then he heard Von Strassen shout at him to halt, and there was something in the way he said it that did, in fact, make Jacob stop in his tracks.
“Turn around,” Von Strassen ordered.
Jacob slowly turned.
The man’s head and face were covered in blood, but he was standing there—staggering, really—in the doorway of the barn, holding his pistol and pointing it at Jacob’s chest.
“Did you really think you could get away with all this, you filthy swine?” Von Strassen bellowed. “Did you really think you could defeat the Aryan people? Never. You are not human. You are a cancer. You and all of the Jews. You must be exterminated once and for all. You must not be allowed to infect the Fatherland or any part of Europe or any part of the world. Exterminating vermin like you is my job. And how I love it.”
Jacob could not see Von Strassen’s face clearly. With the barn doors open and the morning light coming in from the back, the Nazi was mostly a silhouette. But his voice and his words were crystal clear, and every hair stood up on the back of Jacob’s neck as he heard the man speak.
It was so sad, Jacob thought. He had come so far. He was almost free. And far more important, he was so close—just a few short kilometers—from being able to deliver the strongbox to the Jewish council, so close to saving so many Jewish souls otherwise destined to perish in the gas chambers and ovens of the death camps. How could he have gotten so far and still failed? Why? What was it all for?
“If you’re going to kill me, do it now,” Jacob told Von Strassen.
He was terrified of dying, but he was even more terrified of going back to Auschwitz.
But Von Strassen just cackled his sick, twisted, demonic laugh. “I have no intention of killing you now, Mr. Weisz. I want you to spend a little time with my friend Dr. Mengele first. And then I want you to watch as we flay Miss Cohen’s lovely flesh from her bones before your eyes. And then, when I am good and ready, I will send you from one hell to another. Until then, however—”
But Von Strassen never finished his sentence. Instead a gun went off—not once but twice.
Jacob staggered back, sure that Von Strassen had been toying with him, certain that he had pulled the trigger and fired the Luger. But then blood started pouring out of Von Strassen’s mouth. He dropped the pistol and fell forward, flat on his face.
Standing behind him was Jedrick, a smoking double-barreled shotgun in his hands.
99
SIX WEEKS LATER
JULY 29, 1944
WASHINGTON, D.C.
“I don’t understand,” the old man said. “You just walked out?”
Ambassador François d’Astier, age eighty-four, shifted in his overstuffed chair in the parlor of the brownstone walk-up where he and his wife, Camille, lived in Georgetown, just over a mile from the White House. The couple had been listening intently for nearly two hours, but as the balding yet distinguished-looking man puffed on his cigar, Jacob could see that Luc’s grandfather was struggling to make sense of all that he was hearing.
“Actually, we drove out,” Jacob said simply.
“Drove out?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Weren’t there soldiers when
you got to the frontier?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Nazi soldiers or Poles?”
“Both,” Jacob said. “Plus Slovak soldiers on the other side.”
“And they just let you pass?” d’Astier asked again.
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m sorry; I’m just not following,” d’Astier said. “Why would they do that?”
Now Jacob shifted in his seat. He took a sip of tea and gathered his thoughts. He tried not to look it, but he felt deeply frustrated. Did they not believe him? Did they think he was making this all up? Why would he? How would he have known so many details about their grandson—indeed, about their entire family—if he hadn’t met Jean-Luc Leclerc in Auschwitz, if they hadn’t truly escaped together?
Jacob couldn’t bear the thought of people not believing him. He didn’t have time for such foolishness. People were dying. Day after day, thousands of Hungarian Jews—and so many others—were being sent to the ovens. How many more cups of tea was he going to have to drink with how many more people before someone not only believed him but did something real, something meaningful to save lives?
It had already been an unbearable six weeks since he had escaped Auschwitz and arrived in Žilina. Since then he had told the Jewish council in Czechoslovakia everything he knew about what was happening in the death camps. He had turned over the strongbox and all of its documents. He had helped draft the Auschwitz Protocol, a forty-page report documenting in great detail exactly what the Nazis were doing to the Jews in Auschwitz-Birkenau. But everything seemed to go so slowly. It was maddening beyond belief. He had told his story and explained the Protocol to more rabbis than he could count. He had detailed what he had seen and heard to untold representatives from the International Red Cross, British intelligence, even the Vatican.
Yet the Nazi trains were still running. Day and night the Jews of Hungary continued to be shoved into cattle cars and sent to the death camps to become ashes. Nothing Jacob had said had moved the Allies to mount a rescue operation. Nothing he had done had saved a single Jewish life.
Now he was finally in Washington, D.C., sitting in the home of Luc’s grandfather. Yet he felt farther from his goal than ever before. Still, Jacob fought to push away the gloominess and despair that threatened to engulf him. He told himself he could not lose hope now, not after he had come so far. He reminded himself that Ambassador d’Astier was not the problem. He might still be the answer. If Luc was right, this crippled old man—confined to a wheelchair—might be the Jewish people’s best hope. Yet he could only help if he understood and believed everything Jacob said. Otherwise it had all been for nothing.
Jacob took a deep breath and tried to figure out where he had gone wrong. He had carefully and patiently explained everything that had happened, from the raid on train 801, to meeting Luc inside the camp, to how they had survived, to their extensive planning and preparations and the details of their escape. So far the d’Astiers had seemed to track with all of it, even while mourning the loss of their grandson—news they had not heard until Jacob had shown up unannounced at their door just a few hours earlier. Now, however, the French couple seemed baffled, even somewhat skeptical.
It occurred to Jacob that in his fatigue and haste, he had left out some very significant details.
“Forgive me,” he said, suddenly desperate to correct his mistake, “but I forgot to tell you something.”
“Please go ahead; we’re listening,” the retired diplomat said, leaning forward in his chair.
“As I said a moment ago, after the gun battle in the barn, we couldn’t stay in the house,” Jacob explained. “We knew we had to flee, yet the roads were all shut down. Jedrick and Brygita begged me to take them with me. I was skeptical; this had not been part of my plan. But they had saved my life. And together we had buried Luc. I knew I couldn’t just leave them there.”
“So what did you do?” Camille d’Astier asked. The woman had the face and the bearing of a French aristocrat, though she was probably also in her eighties and seemed quite frail and a bit hard of hearing.
“I suggested Jedrick don a Nazi uniform, as I had done,” Jacob said. “He was horrified at first but quickly realized it was the only way, so he agreed.”
“What about you?” the ambassador asked. “Your leg was wounded.”
“Brygita was a nurse,” Jacob replied. “She bandaged me up as best she could. Gave me some painkillers, which I’m afraid didn’t do much good. Then I stripped an undamaged uniform off one of the men I’d shot—in the face, not in the chest—and put it on.”
“What about the wife?” Mrs. d’Astier asked. “She didn’t dress up as a Nazi, did she?”
“No, ma’am,” Jacob said.
“What did she do?”
“We put her in the trunk.”
“The trunk of what?”
“Colonel Von Strassen’s car.”
The couple looked aghast.
“Then what did you do?” the ambassador asked.
“I rifled through Von Strassen’s briefcase and found copies of his orders and a sheaf of other official papers. Then I told Jedrick to drive. I got in the passenger’s side. And we raced for the Slovakian border like we were on a mission from Berlin.”
“And they let you right through?” d’Astier asked, incredulous.
“Yes, sir,” Jacob said.
“Why?”
“Well, sir, I think we just looked the part,” Jacob said. “I spoke flawless German. We had official papers. They had no reason to doubt us.”
“They never searched the car?”
“No, sir.”
“So you just drove through the checkpoint?”
“It was the most terrifying moment of my life,” Jacob confirmed.
“Even considering everything else you had been through?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“And then?”
“Otto Steinberger and Abe Frenkel had given me precise instructions,” Jacob said. “I knew exactly where I was supposed to link up with the underground. Unfortunately, I knew I would not be allowed to bring the couple with me. I apologized profusely, but they understood. Together we ditched the car in a river and made sure it sank to the bottom. We hid the Nazi uniforms so others could retrieve them later and put them to good use. Then we put on regular civilian clothes we had brought from the house, and we said our good-byes. They went their way, and I went mine.”
“And now here you are,” the ambassador said.
“Well, six frustrating weeks later, yes, here I am,” Jacob said.
“Then I’m guessing you have it with you, no? This Auschwitz Protocol?”
“I do, sir, yes,” Jacob said, patting the leather briefcase at his feet.
“And all the documentation that you and Luc smuggled out of the camp?”
“Yes, sir,” Jacob said. “It’s all here.”
The ambassador nodded, and Jacob opened the satchel—a gift from a leader of the Jewish council in Czechoslovakia. He pulled out the forty-page document and handed it over.
The old man just sat there for a few moments, holding the report in his hands and staring at it.
“This tells the whole story?” he asked finally.
“Well, sir, it depends what you mean by ‘the whole story,’” Jacob said. “It tells the factual details of what Hoess and his men are doing inside Auschwitz-Birkenau and the subcamps. It documents the systematic extermination that is under way. It provides detailed maps of the camps, schematics of the gas chambers, technical details of the ovens—including who built them and when—the schedule of all the trains that have come, how many people were on those trains, how many perished, and so forth. But no, it doesn’t tell the story I just told you. It doesn’t tell our personal stories in the camps or how we escaped. We just wanted to explain as carefully and precisely as we could what the Nazis are actually doing, what the ‘final solution to the Jewish question’ really means. We made it as clinical and dispassionate as we could. But
I’ll let you be the judge.”
“And you wrote this?”
“I helped, sir,” Jacob said. “But I was not the only one who survived to tell the story.”
“Oh?”
“Steinberger and Frenkel also made it.”
“Both of them?”
“Yes, sir,” Jacob said. “And Fischer and Kopecký made it too.”
The old man looked at his wife. They were both astonished.
“I couldn’t believe it myself,” Jacob said, seeing the look in their eyes. “But when I got to Žilina, there they were. I was stunned. I was so certain they had been captured or killed. But they told me of the miracles that had happened to get them all the way out. So I asked them, ‘What went wrong? Why aren’t the Hungarian Jews revolting? Why are they still getting on the trains?’ They said it was complicated. Steinberger told me that for weeks after they reached the council, no one believed them. Everyone thought they were delusional or exaggerating or embellishing to get more sympathy.”
“Even though they were eyewitnesses?”
“Apparently, yes,” Jacob said. “Then Fischer and Kopecký arrived. They told the same story. Then I arrived, also with the same story, and documents—proof. And I sent them to get the Nazi uniforms. And I told them to go find the car. And I had Von Strassen’s papers and other intelligence documents from Hoess and the Gestapo. And the mood began to change. The others—the four of them—they were already working on the Protocol before I arrived. But they asked me to help, and I did. We added material that I was able to bring out, and I helped them translate it into several other languages.”
“And when the council read it?”
“They were finally convinced.”
“And the Red Cross representatives?”
“They were convinced as well.”
“But still nothing has been done to stop the killing.”
“No.”
“How many Hungarian Jews have died so far?” d’Astier asked.
The Auschwitz Escape Page 39