The plan was masterminded by Kazimierz Piechowski,
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a Polish political prisoner who had been in Auschwitz for eighteen months. He was only too aware of the risks involved:
There had been all kinds of attempts to escape before, but the majority failed because at roll-call when one person was found missing they [the SS men and Kapos] started searching with specially trained dogs and they
would find the escapee hidden under some planks or between cement sacks. When they found such a prisoner they would put a sign on his back saying, “Hooray! Hooray! I'm back with you again!” and he would have to beat a big drum and walk up and down the camp and then walk to the gallows. He walked very slowly, as if he wanted to prolong his life.
Another troubling concern for any potential escapee was the terrible consequences for the remaining prisoners if someone was found to have escaped from their block. As with the case of Father Maksymilian Kolbe, ten prisoners from the escapee's block would be selected to starve to death. “This caused a real paralysis for some prisoners,” says Piechowski, “but others didn't want to think about what would happen. They wanted to get out of this hell at all costs.”
Before Piechowski faced this double challengeâto escape from the camp and yet prevent reprisals against those who stayed behindâhe needed to surmount a more immediate obstacle: simply staying alive. At first, he worked outside in the snow in one of the worst commandos of all: “There was heavy work and the food was hopeless. I was on my way to becoming a âMuslim'
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âthat's what SS men called prisoners who had lost contact with reality. I felt helpless.” Then he became the beneficiary of a vital piece of luck. He was selected for another work commando.
I joined this commando and as we walked through the gate I asked my friend next to me, “Where are we going?” My colleague said, “Don't you know? Well, you've won! Because we work in the warehouse. It's a heavy job, but at least you're not outside in the frost. You'll have a roof over your head.” I thought I had gone straight to heaven.
Piechowski also found that working inside in the “heaven” of the warehouse had one extra benefit:
My comrades taught me that if there's a wagon and we're loading it with flour then I should hit the sack so the flour would come out. The guard would then tell us to get rid of it. But we didn't throw it awayâwe mixed it with water and made ravioli.
As a result of this change in fortune Piechowski felt that he “could survive.”
Then one day, shortly after he began work in the warehouse, he had a conversation with a Ukrainian prisoner, Eugeniusz Bendera, who worked in the nearby SS garage as a mechanic.
He [Bendera] walked out to work with us and then returned with us, and one day he confided to me that he'd been told he was on the list of people to be killedâthe selections were frequent. He said to me, “Kazimierz, what am I to do? I'm on the death list!” I told him, “There's nothing I can do.” But he persevered and said, “Kazimierz, why don't we escape from here?” For me this was a shockâhow could we escape? And he said, “Well, a car. I could get a car any time.” And I started thinking whether it was possible. And I told Eugeniusz that we would also need some uniforms to be able to leaveâSS uniforms.
It was at this point that the idea of escape stalled. How could they possibly get their hands on any SS uniforms? Then, once again, they were blessed by good fortune. Piechowski was told by his Kapo to go to the second floor of the warehouse in which they were working and bring down some empty boxes. Walking down the corridor, he saw on one of the doors a sign that read “Uniforms” in German. He tried the door but it was locked. Then one day shortly afterwards he was sent upstairs on the same mission by his Kapo and this time noticed the door was slightly ajar.
So the only thing I could think of was to enter and see what will happen. I opened the door and this SS man was putting something on the shelf and he started hitting me and kicking me. I fell on the floor. “You swine!” he said. âYou Polish swine, you dog, you've no right to be here! Report to the main office, you Polish pig.” So I crawled out to the corridor.
But Piechowski knew that if he reported that he had entered the room it meant transfer to the Penal Commando and almost certain death. So he did nothing and hoped for the bestâand the best duly arrived. He escaped punishment altogether as the SS man he had disturbed failed to follow up
the incidentâanother lucky break in a string of good fortune. He had gambled and won, because he had also been able to glimpse just what the room containedâuniforms, grenades, ammunition, helmets, in fact everything he and his comrades needed.
The best day to attempt the escape was a Saturday, because the SS men did not work in the warehouse area of the camp on the weekend. Piechowski devised a way to gain access to the warehouse by removing one of the screws on a hatch that was used to enable coal to be poured into storage bins in the basement. From the coal store they could enter the rest of the building. Piechowski was now determined to attempt the break-out, until, lying in his bunk, a “thunderbolt” struck him. He realized that “ten people will be killed for every one person who escapes.” “I couldn't sleep all nightâthis thought pestered me,” he says, “until in one split second it came to me. There is one way [to prevent this]âa fictitious work commando.” Piechowski's plan was that four of them would leave the main camp posing as a Rollwagen commando, pushing a cart. They would then officially be signed out of the inner security compound, though still be within the outer area where many of the inmates worked. If they subsequently disappeared it was possible that their block Kapo would be held solely responsible, since he would be assumed to have sanctioned the commando.
It was a daring plan, and it required them to find two more prisoners prepared to take the risk because a total of four were now required to make up the Rollwagen commando. Bendera immediately recruited one of the priests imprisoned in his block, but then they ran into difficulties. Piechowski approached one of his closest friends but the man said he would only take part if he could, in turn, bring someone else. This was impossible since only four people could be in the commando. The next friend Piechowski approached said, “There's maybe a chance, but it's minimal,” and so he refused. Finally a youth from Warsaw, a former boy scout named StanisÅaw Jaster, agreed to go with them even though he felt the enterprise was “highrisk.”
Jaster immediately spotted the utterly unpredictable element on which the whole escape hingedâwhether the SS guards at the outer perimeter gate would let them drive through without asking to see any documents. If the guards did their job properly and stopped the car, they would be finished. In
such circumstances, the escapees agreed, rather than shoot at the SS men they would turn their guns on themselves. They feared that, if even one SS man died during their escape, the reprisals against the rest of the camp would be horrendousâperhaps 500 or 1,000 prisoners would be killed.
Saturday, June 20, 1942, was the date they fixed for their escape attempt. In the morning two of them put on armbands and thus pretended they were Kapos, and then all four pushed a handcart laden with rubbish out thorough the “Arbeit macht frei” gate of Auschwitz I towards the camp perimeter beyond. “By the gate,” says Piechowski, “I said to the guard in German, âPrisoner nine hundred and eighteen plus three others with the Rollwagen going to the warehouse.' He [the SS guard] put it down in his book and let us go.” Once past the gate, Eugeniusz Bendera made his way to the deserted SS garage to prepare the car while the other three entered the warehouse by the coal hatch. Then they saw that the door to the clothes storage area on the second floor was held fast by a heavy steel rod, but StanisÅaw, “full of energy,” took a pickaxe and smashed it open. Once inside, they hurriedly selected uniforms for themselves and for Bendera. They also took four machine guns and eight grenades.
The three of them, dressed as SS men, were about to leave the warehouse when they heard two Germans talking outside. “I didn't know what to do,” says Piechowski. “What if they enter? But then it was a miracleâif you believe in miracles. These guys conversed and they never came into the warehouseâthey just left.”
Through the window of the warehouse they gave Bendera the sign to drive the car the few meters up to the entrance. Then he got out of the car and stood to attention in front of his three friends dressed as SS men. “There was a watchtower every sixty or seventy meters,” says Piechowski, “and the guard was looking at us, but we didn't care because we're sure of ourselves. Eugeniusz took off his hat, said something to me, and I pointed him to the warehouse and there he changed and dressed as an SS man.”
The four prisoners were ready to embark on the most dangerous phase of their escape:
Off we went. And after the first bend we saw two SS men. Eugeniusz said, “Be careful!” We passed them and they said, “Heil Hitler!” and we
did the same. We drove about three or four hundred meters and there was another SS man repairing a bicycle. He looked at us and said, “Heil Hitler!” and we did the same. Now we were on the way to the main gate and the question was whether they will let us through without any documentsâbut we believed it was possible. The gate was closed and on the right was an SS man with a machine gun and on the left there was a table with a chair and an SS man sitting down. There's still eighty meters to go and Eugeniusz reduced the engine to second gear, then fifty meters to go and the gate was still closed. They can see the car, and all of us in SS uniforms, and still the pole was in place. About twenty meters away I looked at Eugeniusz and I could see the sweat on his forehead and nose. And then maybe fifteen meters away I thought, “It's time to kill myself,” just as we'd decided. At that moment, I was hit in the back by the priestâI knew they're counting on me. So I yelled at the SS [men]: “How long are we going to be waiting here!” I cursed them. And then the SS man at the watchtower said something and he opened the gate and we went through. That was freedom.
Exhilarated, the four men drove off through the Polish countryside and within minutes were several kilometers from Auschwitz. With the help of friends nearby they then changed out of their SS uniforms, abandoned the car, and merged back into the ordinary population of Poland. The first part of their planâtheir own successful escapeâhad been accomplished.
Back at Auschwitz, the second part was also achieved shortly. Kazimierz Piechowski's ruse of the fake work commando did save all but one of the remaining prisoners in his block from reprisal. It was his Kapo alone who was singled out for punishmentâhe was sent to the starvation cell in Block 11.
But, in a telling reminder of how mere physical removal from Auschwitz did not necessarily end the suffering of those who had been incarcerated there, all three of Piechowski's fellow escapees faced difficulties afterwards. StanisÅaw Jaster had to deal with the terrible knowledge that his parents were sent to Auschwitz in reprisal and died there. He himself was killed in Warsaw during the occupation.
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Józef, the priest, was so traumatized by his experiences in Auschwitz that, according to Piechowski, he “walked around in a trance.” After the war he was killed when a bus ran into him. Eugeniusz
Bendera, the man who had first suggested they escape when he found himself on the death list, returned home only to find that his wife had left him. He turned to drink and died. Of the original four only Kazimierz Piechowski is still alive, and he too says he is still in “psychic turmoil” as a result of the suffering he endured. In his dreams he is attacked by SS men with dogs and emerges “completely wet with sweat and disassociated mentally.”
Despite the tribulations all four faced after their dramatic escape from Auschwitz, however, none of them ever doubted that they had made the right decision to risk everything on flight. And if they had known what was in Himmler's mind as he made his tour of the camp in July 1942 they would have been doubly sure. For the killing in Poland was about to intensify.
On July 19 Himmler announced: “I herewith order that the resettlement of the entire Jewish population of the General Government be carried out and completed by December 31.” In this context “resettlement” was a euphemism for “murder.” Himmler thus revealed that he had set a target date for the annihilation of several million Polish Jews.
Himmler's words, however, were less an order for the future and more a final statement. For they were the end result of a cumulative process of decision making that stretched back to before the invasion of the Soviet Unionâthe last link in a chain of causation that we can see only with hindsight. Each of the crucial decisions that preceded his announcementâthe decision to ghettoize the Polish Jews, the order behind the pit killings in the East and the subsequent gassing experiments, the decision to deport the German Jews, and then find a method to kill “unproductive” Jews in the ghetto to make room for themâall of these actions and more lay behind Himmler's bland but death-dealing statement of July 19, 1942. The conceptual thinking was over, and the fundamental decision already had been made months before: The Nazis were going to murder the Jews. All that remained were the practicalities of implementationâand the SS believed it was good at practicalities.
During 1942, the Nazis were to increase massively the rate at which they killed people in pursuit of their “Final Solution.” Yet the killing capacity at Auschwitz remained limited to the gas chambers of “The Little Red House” and “The Little White House” (regular killings at the crematorium in the main camp having been discontinued as a result of the difficulties encounteredâdiscussed
here in Chapter 2). Auschwitz, therefore, despite its subsequent notoriety, was to play only a minor part in the killing of Polish Jews during 1942.