The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World

Walter became even more determined to escape for two reasons. First, on January 15, 1944, Walter learned about the Nazis’ plan to build a new railway line directly to the gas chambers. The reason for this plan was to accommodate the arrival of one million Jewish people from Hungary, most of whom the Nazis planned to immediately murder by gas. Second, Walter wanted to save the second family camp. SS officers planned to kill this group in June 1944, exactly six months after their arrival.

Walter needed a mentor on escapology, which he found in Dmitri Volkov, a Russian prisoner of war who was also, unbeknownst to the Nazis, a captain in the Red Army. The Nazis would have murdered Volkov if they knew about his standing. Walter’s ability to speak Russian enabled him to speak with Volkov. After the two built trust, Volkov told Walter several key rules for a successful escape.

First, Volkov told Walter what he should and should not carry. The former category included a knife (either for hunting or self-defense), a razor blade (in case of capture), matches for cooking, salt, and a watch. Money and meat fell in the second category. If an escapee carried money, they might be tempted to buy food from a shop. However, Volkov emphasized that escapees should always avoid people. The Nazis’ tracker dogs could furthermore sniff out the meat, finding the escapee.

Volkov also emphasized to Walter the importance of only walking at night and finding a sleeping place before dawn to avoid detection. Volkov told Walter to not share his plans or trust anyone, something Walter learned from the failed escape attempts. Another lesson was to not fear the Germans since they, too, can die. Volkov also underscored that breaking out of the camp was just the beginning. He told Walter that “you cannot relax while you are on Nazi-ruled soil, not even for a second” (151). Volkov’s final lesson was to soak makhorka in petrol. Once dried, the tobacco hid the human scent from the Nazis’ tracker dogs.

Walter sought approval of his escape plan from the Auschwitz underground resistance leadership. On March 31, 1944, the leadership gave Walter their decision. They believed Walter was unreliable for the mission due to his “‘inexperience, personal volatility and impulsiveness,’ as well as some unspecified ‘other factors’” (153). While the leadership refused to help Walter, they would not stop him either. The leadership just asked that Walter and Fred avoid interrogation if they were caught, which would spell disaster for the other prisoners.

Walter knew Fred had to be his accomplice. Both came from Trnava, shared similar experiences at Auschwitz, and were determined to escape from the beginning.

Walter and Fred borrowed their hideout idea from four other prisoners. Three of the four prisoners (Alexander Eisenbach, Abraham Gotzel, and Jacob Balaban) worked as delivery men for the morgue, which meant they had similar freedom of movement as Walter and Fred. During one of their travels, they entered a new area under construction called Mexico, where SS officers planned to house Hungarian Jewish prisoners. While in Mexico, the men met a Soviet Jewish prisoner of war named Citrin. The four men noticed a crater in the ground. Using lumber from the surrounding area, they constructed an underground shelter and scattered the area with dried petrol-soaked Soviet tobacco.

Citrin tested their hideout first. After safely hiding from the Nazis for one night, the other men joined him in the hideout. Eisenbach, who was also Slovak, asked Walter to keep an eye on the hideout and alert the men for signs of danger. After three days and nights, the men escaped Auschwitz. Unfortunately, they broke one of Volkov’s golden rules: Avoid people. German foresters captured the men and turned them over to SS officers near the town of Porąbka. While they waited for the arrival of the Nazis, the men dumped their cash and valuables and agreed on a story. These actions saved their lives. Because they did not have wealth on them at the time of their capture and told the same story under torture, the SS officers did not murder them. Instead, they assigned the men to hard labor. Even under torture, the men did not give up the hideout location to the Nazis. Fred and Walter could still use the hideout as part of their escape plan.

Walter and Fred tried several times to initiate their escape plan beginning on April 3, 1944. Both men ran into challenges, including vigilant SS guards and a botched rescue attempt. Finally, on April 7, 1944, Walter and Fred began their escape. The two men both miraculously made it to the rendezvous point at their hideout at two o’clock in the afternoon. They got into the hideout, and two fellow prisoners, Bolek and Adamek, covered the opening with planks. Walter and Fred did not realize that it was the night of Seder, a Jewish festival that called for Jewish people to “celebrate their liberty, to give thanks to a wise and mighty God for not forgetting his people, for rescuing them from an evil ruler and for delivering them from bondage” (168). Like their Jewish ancestors, Walter and Fred were trying to escape from slavery to freedom.

Chapter 17 describes Walter’s time in the underground hideout. As they hid, life continued in both the death and concentration camps. In the death camps, Nazis continued murdering Jewish people. Walter and Fred heard trucks ferrying new Jewish arrivals from the ramp to the gas chambers and then their corpses to the crematoriums. In the concentration camps, SS officers continued their enslavement of Jewish people. SS officers still looked for the two men.

On the third night, Walter and Fred worried about roll call. If the Nazis discovered more prisoners missing, it would restart the clock: SS officers would guard the outer perimeter for another three days and nights. Luckily, no alarm sounded.

Walter and Fred emerged from their hideout after a full 80 hours of hiding. Escaping from their hideout was more difficult than they had imagined for two reasons. First, it was hard to shift the stack of boards on top of their heads. Second, both faced muscle atrophy, or the wasting of their muscle tissue, due to lying still for such a prolonged period. The men even found it hard to consume water and food. Freedland notes, “It was as if their bodies had turned in on themselves, as if their innards had coiled up and closed” (171). The men finally escaped by working together and shoving the boards aside. Once they emerged, the men returned the boards over their hideout to their original position so the SS officers would not discover their hiding place and other Jewish people might use the hideout to escape.

Escaping their hideout was just the first step. The two men then crossed a river of sand, circled the entire perimeter of the camp, and crawled underneath the last wire fence that encircled the camp. After this, the men finally stood outside all camp perimeters. At two o’clock in the morning on April 10, 1944, Walter and Fred had broken out of Auschwitz.

Freedland underscores that “the universe outside Auschwitz contained almost as many perils as were held within” (175). First, unbeknownst to Walter and Fred, the two men were internationally wanted fugitives. SS officers notified all Gestapo units, the border police, and the SS administrative head office in Germany and throughout the Nazi empire via telegraph about Walter and Fred’s escape. Nazis pinned the men’s faces on boards at police stations across German-occupied territory.

Second, while in Auschwitz, Walter and Fred were cut off from the outside world. They did not have a network they could rely on post-escape for food, clothes, weapons, or fake papers. The two men also told no one, including each other, about their planned route. They just agreed to head south toward Slovakia. While still in the camp, Walter had found a child’s atlas, which he used to memorize the path from Auschwitz to Slovakia, which helped him and Fred escape. Walter followed the route and list of towns he memorized from the atlas. Slovakia was their destination of choice because it was their homeland. They could hide there, and their accents allowed them to blend in and avoid suspicion.

Their travels involved constant danger. The men evaded SS officers and a gathering of Hitler Youth. Traveling in the dark hindered their eyesight and disoriented them. As a result, they lost their way several times, accidentally ending up in a public park near one of Auschwitz’s subcamps and in the middle of the town of Bielsko. At Bielsko, Walter and Fred broke one of Volkov’s golden rules: They asked for help. The men understood the dangers. The Nazis offered rewards, such as sugar or a bottle of vodka, to Polish people who turned in fugitive Jewish people. The men had no choice. They needed to hide or risk discovery by the townspeople. Walter and Fred chose a rundown peasant cottage where a woman and her teenage daughter lived. Both men spoke Polish and knew the proper greeting, which was “Praise be the name of Jesus Christ” (181). Luckily, the woman willingly harbored Walter and Fred in her home for one day. She even gave them money to assist with the rest of their journey.

The woman also explained to Walter and Fred the inner workings of the Nazi regime that shored up the complicity of civilians. First, a high percentage of civilians were German. They carried weapons with them and were authorized to shoot loiterers on sight. Polish partisans lived in the area, which made the Germans vigilant. The woman also confirmed that most Polish people would not help the men. The Nazis considered help of escaped prisoners a capital offense and murdered perpetrators and their families. Many Polish people and their families had already been killed for the mistake of helping undercover German agents posing as Polish or Russian escapees.

On April 16, the men finally reached Porąbka. The town’s proximity to a dam made it a military target for the Allied powers, which meant there was a heavy presence of German soldiers. Walter and Fred understood the danger posed by this town. German foresters caught Eisenbach and the other four escapees here. To avoid the town and dam, Walter and Fred decided to follow the mountainside.

Despite their attempts to avoid detection, Nazi bullets almost killed Walter and Fred outside Porąbka. The two men escaped by jumping into an ice-cold stream, where they both lost their overcoats and meagre provisions. After this narrow escape, Walter and Fred agreed to avoid well-worn paths. After 10 days of being on the run, the men finally reached the town of Milówka. From the atlas, Walter knew there were only two more towns until the Polish-Slovak border. The men eventually made it to Slovakia due to human kindness.

Walter and Fred first ran into a middle-aged woman herding goats. They asked her for help and admitted they were fugitives from Auschwitz. The woman hid Walter and Fred in her goat hut. She did not betray them and instead gave them food. At nightfall, the woman returned with a man named Tadeusz. When Walter and Fred first saw Tadeusz, they immediately noticed that he was carrying a gun. Given the man’s age, they did not think he would try to kill them. Rather, they were concerned that Tadeusz might force them to walk at gunpoint to the nearest SS office. If this turned out to be the case, Walter and Fred had decided they would fight with their knives. The woman gave Walter and Fred more food, which they ate hastily. The depth of their hunger convinced Tadeusz that they were in fact from a concentration camp and not undercover German agents, so he put his gun away.

After Walter and Fred convinced Tadeusz that they were from a concentration camp, Tadeusz brought them to his home for the night. Tadeusz gave them both food and new pairs of boots since they could no longer wear their own due to the swelling of their feet. Likely part of the underground Polish resistance, Tadeusz guided the men to Slovakia. He told Walter and Fred to head to his friend Ondrej Čanecký’s house in the Slovak village of Skalité.

Walter and Fred followed Tadeusz’s orders. Čanecký hid the men, giving them food and new clothes, allowing Walter and Fred to blend in with the villagers. Walter and Fred told Čanecký that they needed to meet with members of the Jewish community. Čanecký suggested they visit Pollack, a Jewish doctor living in a nearby town. Walter recognized this name. Dr. Pollack was supposed to be on the same transport as Walter from Nováky to Majdanek, but his name disappeared from the list.

Walter and Fred arrived at Dr. Pollack’s clinic, located in the local army barracks. Walter convinced the doctor to see him alone. Walter proceeded to explain to the doctor their connection as well as the horrors that took place at Auschwitz. Dr. Pollack believed Walter. He organized for Walter and Fred to meet with the only Jewish organization Tiso permitted, the ÚŽ (Ústredňa Židov) or Jewish council. Walter and Fred traveled by train to another village, where they met Erwin Steiner, a member of the council. Steiner took the two men to the council’s headquarters. Here, Walter “began to reveal the truth of Auschwitz” (195).