Their plan is to reach the Slovakian border in the Beskidy Mountains, 120 kilometers away, walking by night and hiding during the day. And praying. They know they can’t hope for help from the Polish civilian population because the Germans shoot any locals who provide refuge to fugitives.
They walk in the dark, tripping, falling, getting up, and walking on again. After a few hours of slow walking, uncertain if they’re heading in the right direction, the two men notice that the forest thins out, the trees start to disappear, and they find themselves in scrubland. They even make out the light of a house a few hundred meters away. They finally emerge onto a dirt road. It’s riskier, but as the road isn’t paved, they figure it will be little used. They decide to continue along it, keeping as close to the ditch as they can, alert to any sound. Owl hoots add an eerie note to the darkness, and the breeze is so cold it leaves them breathless. Whenever they come close to a house, they head back into the forest and skirt round it at a safe distance. On one occasion, dogs bark nervously, trying to betray their presence; the runaways quicken their step.
When the sky begins to lighten, they decide in whispers to make their way into the densest part of the forest and find a tall tree to climb so they can spend the day hidden. They can now see the outline of their surroundings better and make headway more easily. Thirty minutes later, there is enough light for them to see clearly. They stare at each other for a moment. They are unrecognizable. They’ve spent three days in the pitch-dark, and their beards are longer than usual. There’s a different expression on their faces—a mixture of unease and delight at being outside the camp. They actually don’t recognize each other because they are different now—they are free men. They smile.
They climb a tree and try to make themselves comfortable among the branches, but it’s hard to find a stable position. They take a piece of bread as hard as a log out of their bag and drain the last few drops of water from their small flask. They wait expectantly for the sun to appear, and then Fred knows their position: He points toward a low line of hills.
“We’re well on track for the Slovakian border, Rudi.”
Come what may, no one will take this moment of freedom away from them, as they each chew their bread free of armed Nazis, sirens, and orders. It’s not easy to keep their balance without falling or to avoid sharp branches poking into their bodies, but they’re so tired they manage to reach a state of drowsiness that allows them to rest a little.
Sometime later, they hear voices and the sound of hurried footsteps over the dead foliage. Alarmed, they open their eyes and see a horde of children rushing past a short distance from their tree. They have armbands with swastikas and they’re singing German songs. The fugitives exchange a look of alarm: It’s a Hitler Youth group on an outing. Bad luck would have it that the young leader in charge of the twenty or so children decides to stop for lunch in the clearing a few meters from their tree. The two men freeze and don’t move a muscle. The children laugh, shout, run, fight, sing.… From their perch, the fugitives can make out their khaki uniforms and short pants. The rowdiness and energy of the children, and their occasional appearances dangerously close to the base of the tree searching for berries to throw at their companions are unsettling. Snack time ends, and the instructor orders the children to set off again. The noisy troop moves away, and there are sighs of relief from the top of the tree, as hands open and close in an attempt to get the circulation going again after being rigid for so long.
They’re both anxiously counting the hours till nightfall. They take advantage of the last rays of the sun to get close to the road again and use the sunset to accurately locate the west.
Their second night is much more grueling than the first. They have to stop frequently to rest; they’re worn out. The adrenaline rush brought on by their escape, which gave them strength the previous day, has tailed off. But even so, they continue on their way until the sky begins to lighten and they can’t go any farther. Their road has offered them many crossings and junctions, and they’ve made their choices intuitively, but they really don’t know where they are.
They’ve left the dense forest behind and reached a much less overgrown area, with scatterings of trees, cultivated fields, and scrubland. They know it’s a populated area, but they’re too tired to fuss. It’s still very dark, but on one side of the road, they make out a clearing surrounded by shrubs. They head toward it, feel around for some leafy branches to pick up, and build an improvised shelter so they can sleep for a few hours. If the shelter is inconspicuous, they might even be able to spend the whole day in it. They climb into their hideout and close off the entrance with a couple of bushy branches. Daybreaks in Poland are very cold, so they huddle together to keep warm, and finally manage to fall into a sleep of sorts.
They sleep so deeply that when the sound of voices wakes them up, the sun is high in the sky, and they feel a stab of panic in their stomachs. Their refuge is nowhere near as dense as they had thought; the branches they used to close off the entrance leave obvious gaps, and they’re astonished at what they see through these holes. They haven’t stopped to rest in the clearing of a wood, as they believed. In the dark of night, without realizing it, they had reached the edge of a town, and what they had actually done was go to sleep in a public park. What they see, a few meters from what they thought was an unobtrusive clearing, are benches and swings.
The two exchange a petrified look, not daring to move a muscle, because they can hear footsteps approaching. When they were preparing their escape, they devised ways to avoid SS patrols, checkpoints, and dogs, but it is children who have become their worst nightmare.
Before fear has had time to overcome them, two children, a boy and a girl with blond hair and blue eyes, have already planted themselves in front of the entrance to their shelter and are staring at them with Aryan curiosity. They see a pair of black boots approaching a few steps behind the children, who turn around and run off, shouting in German,
“Papa, Papa, come! There are some strange men!”
The cap of an SS sergeant appears, and the Nazi stands there looking at them. Rudi and Fred are paralyzed, huddled together, completely vulnerable. The Oberscharführer’s head looks disproportionally large as it leans in among the branches, like the head of an ogre. The skull on the cap’s peak looks at them as if it recognizes them. In that moment, the two fugitives see their entire lives flash before their eyes. They want to say something, but fear has taken away their voices and frozen any movement. The Nazi sergeant studies them, and a malicious smile appears on his face. They see his wife’s high heels approaching and don’t quite catch what her husband whispers to her.
All they hear is the scandalized German woman’s loud reply:
“You can’t bring children to a public park anymore without finding two men embracing each other among the plants! It’s a disgrace!”
The woman storms off indignantly, and the sergeant, the little smile still on his face, collects his children and walks off after her.
Rudi and Fred look at each other lying on the weeds. They hadn’t noticed that they were still hugging each other, as they were when they fell asleep. And so now they hug each other even more firmly and are eternally grateful that fear left them speechless. Anything they might have said, even a single word, would have betrayed them as foreigners. Silence is usually golden.
Rudi Rosenberg and Fred Wetzler believe they are not far from the Slovak border, though they don’t know exactly the right road to the Beskidy mountain range. But that’s their second problem. Their first is that they are not invisible. On a sharp corner of a lane, they almost run headfirst into a woman. They are in a populated area with open fields: It’s inevitable that they’ll come across people like this Polish peasant with a heavily wrinkled face, who is looking at them apprehensively.
The two men decide they have no other option but to risk everything—they were going to bump into someone sooner or later. And anyway, they need help. They’ve been without food for more than
twenty-four hours, they haven’t slept for days, and they don’t even know if they’re on the right track to Slovakia. They exchange a quick glance and instantly agree to tell the truth to this woman. In uncertain Polish, mixed with Czech phrases, much hand waving, and even interruptions to what the other is saying in an attempt to produce a convincing explanation, they tell the old woman that they are fugitives from Auschwitz. They are peaceful and just need to know how to get to the border so they can go back home.
The suspicious expression on the peasant woman’s face hasn’t altered: She even steps back when they try to come closer. Fred and Rudi fall silent. She peers at them with tiny eyes like peppercorns. They are tired, hungry, disoriented—and frightened. They beg her for help with gestures, and she looks down. The two men exchange glances, and Fred motions with his head that they have to leave before the woman starts to shout for help and gives them away. But they are afraid that she’ll sound the alarm the minute they turn around and stop eye contact with her.
They don’t have time to launch into their retreat. The woman looks up, takes a step toward them as if she has reached a sudden decision, and grabs Rudi by the sleeve of his sweater. They realize that she wants to look at them more closely. She examines them in detail, just as she would a horse or a calf. She wants to see what sort of men they are: Their unshaven faces and dirty clothes aren’t enough to convince her that they’ve told her the truth, but she also notices their haggard eyes, swollen from lack of sleep and sunken into their thin, almost cadaverous faces. She notices how their bones protrude everywhere and almost poke out through their skin. And then finally, she gives a nod. She gestures for them to stay where they are and indicates with another hand motion that she’ll bring them something to eat; they even think they understand a bit of what she says to them in Polish—“person” and “border.” After taking a few steps, the woman turns around and insists that they wait, that they stay right where they are.
Rudi whispers that she might go and report them to the German authorities, and that it might be an SS patrol that appears. Fred points out that they can go and hide but, if she raises the alarm that two fugitives from Auschwitz are here, the Germans will cordon off the area and search it. It would be very difficult for them to escape.
They decide to wait. They go over to the other side of the wooden bridge across the little stream from which they had taken a drink that very morning, so that if the SS do come, they’ll see them early enough to be able to head into the forest and gain a minute’s advantage. An hour goes by, and the old peasant woman hasn’t reappeared. Their stomachs begin to demand something more than air.
“The sensible thing would be to return to the forest,” mutters Rudi.
Fred agrees, but neither of them makes a move. They can’t; they’ve used up all their energy. They’ve got nothing left to burn.
After two hours, they give up expecting anyone to come and huddle together to get some protection from the cold. They even doze off. The calm is broken by the sound of hurried footsteps. They aren’t going to bother even trying to escape, no matter who it is. They open their eyes and see that the source of the footsteps is a twelve-year-old boy in a sackcloth jacket and a pair of pants held up with string. He is carrying a parcel. They manage to understand that the boy’s grandmother has sent him. When they open the little wooden box he’s carrying, they discover two steaming hot boiled potatoes on top of two thick fried fillets of veal. They wouldn’t exchange them for all the gold in the world.
Before the boy leaves, they try to ask him about the Slovak border. The boy tells them to wait. So, somewhat calmer after the friendly gesture of food and invigorated by the meal, which they devoured with speedy delight, they stay where they are. Night falls almost immediately, and the temperature drops. They decide to go on short circular walks to keep stiffness and some of the cold at bay.
Finally, they hear the sound of feet again, more cautious this time, and hidden in the darkness. They only make out the man in the moonlight when he’s almost on top of them: He’s dressed in peasant clothing, but he’s got a gun in his hand. Weapons are synonymous with bad news. The man stops in front of them and lights a match, which briefly illuminates their three faces. He has a thick, light brown mustache, which looks like a brush for polishing shoes. He lowers his hand with the gun and stretches out the other one for a handshake.
“Resistance.”
That’s all he says, but it’s enough. Rudi and Lederer jump with joy, they start to dance and hug until they fall to the ground. The Pole looks at them, perplexed. He wonders if they’re drunk. And they are drunk—with freedom.
The partisan introduces himself as Stanis, although they suspect it isn’t his real name. He explains to them in Czech that the reason the woman who found them was suspicious was that she thought they might be Gestapo agents in disguise, on the hunt for Poles collaborating with the Resistance. He tells them they’re very close to the border, and they’ll have to be careful about patrols of German soldiers, but he knows their timetable, and they are so precise that they go past the same spot at the exact same time every night, so the two fugitives will have no trouble avoiding them.
Stanis tells them to follow him. They walk silently in the dark along deserted paths for quite some time until they reach an abandoned stone hut with a collapsed straw roof. The wooden door gives way easily with a push. Inside, the vegetation and dampness have overgrown the four-sided stone space. The Pole squats down, lights a match, removes a few pieces of rotten wood, and grabs hold of a metal ring. He pulls on it and reveals a trapdoor. He takes a candle from his pocket and lights it. With help of the light, they go down a staircase into an old storeroom for hay built underneath the hut, but now containing some mattresses, blankets, and provisions. The three of them dine on cans of soup heated over a little gas camping stove. Then, for the first time in ages, Fred and Rudi sleep peacefully.
The Pole is a man of few words but extraordinary efficiency. They leave early the next morning, and he proves to know the forest tracks with the accuracy of a wild boar. After an entire day walking through the forests with barely a stop, they spend the night in a cave. The next day, they don’t even stop. They go up and down the mountains, avoiding the patrols with ease, searching out rocks to hide in until the danger has passed and they can continue on their way. And at dawn the day after, they finally stand on Slovakian soil.
“You’re free,” says the Pole by way of farewell.
“No, we’re not,” answers Rudi. “We still have one duty to fulfill. The world must know what’s happening.”
The Pole nods, and his bushy mustache moves up and down in agreement.
“Thank you, thank you very much—you’ve saved our lives,” Rudi and Fred tell him.
Stanis shrugs; there is nothing to say in reply.
The second part of the two men’s journey will consist of trying to ensure that the world knows what’s really going on inside the Third Reich, what Europe doesn’t know or doesn’t want to know: that it’s a question of something more than a war about borders—it’s the extermination of an entire race.
* * *
On April 25, 1944, Rudolf Rosenberg and Alfred Wetzler appeared before Dr. Oscar Neumann, the representative of the Slovakian Jews, in the headquarters of the Jewish Council in Zilina. Given his position as registrar in Auschwitz, Rudi was able to dictate a report full of chilling statistics. For the first time, the report described the mechanics of murder on a massive, organized scale, the physical exploitation of slave labor, the appropriation of belongings, the utilization of human hair for the production of cloth, and the extraction of gold and silver teeth and fillings with the objective of melting them down and converting them into coins for the Reich. Rudi calculated the number of Jews liquidated in Auschwitz at 1.76 million.
Rudi also spoke about lines of pregnant women with children clinging to their skirts being led to showers that spewed out poisonous gas; about punishment cells the size of concrete coffins, within whic
h the prisoners couldn’t even sit; about the long workdays spent outdoors by prisoners with snow up to their knees, dressed only in a summer shirt, and with only a bowl of watery soup for the entire day. He talked and talked, and from time to time, tears came to his eyes, but he didn’t stop talking. He was possessed by a feverish desire to shout at a world deafened by the bombs of war that an even dirtier and more terrible war was happening within Europe’s borders behind closed doors. And it had to be stopped, no matter the cost.
When Rudi finished dictating his report, he felt exhausted but satisfied, and at peace with himself for the first time in years. The report was sent immediately to Hungary. The Nazis had taken that country and were organizing the transportation of Jews to concentration camps, which the whole world believed were merely gathering places, not realizing that in reality they were factories of death.
But war not only destroys bodies with machine guns and explosions; it also wipes out sanity and kills souls. Rudi and Fred’s warnings reached the Jewish Council in Hungary, but nobody took any notice of them. The Jewish leaders preferred to believe certain promises made to them by the Nazis and went ahead with the allocation of Jews to transports heading to Poland. This led to a massive increase in the number of arrivals of Hungarians in Auschwitz. After all the pain and suffering, after the joy of freedom, Rudi had to swallow the bitter pill of disillusionment. The report didn’t save the Hungarian lives he believed they’d be able to save. War is like an overflowing river: It’s hard to control and, if you put up a small barrier, it only gets swept along in its path.
Rudi Rosenberg and Fred Wetzler were evacuated to England, where they presented their report. They were listened to in the British Isles, although there was little that could be done from there except, perhaps, to fight with greater daring to put an end to the madness devastating Europe.
The Librarian of Auschwitz Page 29