They would not see it, but they knew what the siren would bring. And soon enough they could hear it: the manhunt under way. The pounding of close on 2,000 pairs of jackboots, tramping across the ground, the senior men alternately swearing and barking orders – screaming them, because, given what had happened a couple of days earlier, another escape was a humiliation – the dogs slavering as they rooted out any sign of frail, quivering human life, 200 of them , trained and primed for this very purpose. The SS would search every ridge and every hollow; they would comb every bush, examine every ditch and shine a light into every trench of the sprawling metropolis of death that was Auschwitz. The search had begun and it would not let up for three days.
Fred and Walter could be precise about that because the Nazis had a security protocol from which they never deviated. This outer part of the camp, where prisoners laboured as slaves, was guarded only during the daylight hours when the inmates were working. No need to watch over it at night, when every last prisoner was herded back inside the inner camp, with its double lines of electrified wire fences. There was only one exception to that rule. If an inmate was missing, presumed to have attempted an escape, the SS kept up the outer ring of armed sentry posts, every watchtower occupied by a man with a machine gun.
It would stay like that for seventy-two hours, while the SS searched. After that, they would conclude that the escapee, or escapees, had got away: from then on, it would be the responsibility of the Gestapo to scour the wider region and find them. Those guarding the outer cordon would be ordered to withdraw, leaving it unmanned. Which meant there was a gap in the Nazi defences. Not a literal gap, but a loophole. If a prisoner could somehow hide in the outer area during those three days and nights after the alarm had been sounded, even as the SS and their dogs strove to sniff them out, then he would emerge on the fourth night into an outer camp that was unguarded. He could escape.
Walter heard a familiar voice. That murderous drunk, Unterscharführer Buntrock, was close by, giving orders to some luckless underlings. ‘Look behind those planks,’ he was saying. ‘Use your heads!’
Fred and Walter braced themselves. The SS men got nearer. Now they could hear boots climbing on to the boards overhead, sending a fine sprinkling of dirt down into the cavity beneath. The pursuers were so close, Walter could hear the heaviness of their breath.
Next came the dogs, scratching at the wood, snuffling and sniffing, shifting from plank to plank, their panting audible through the timber walls and ceiling. Had the Soviet prisoner been wrong about his special brew of tobacco? Or had Walter misunderstood his instructions? Why had these animals not been driven away by the smell?
This time Walter reached for his knife rather than his razor; he wanted a weapon to use against others rather than himself. He felt the throb of his heart.
But, miraculously, the moment passed. The SS men and their dogs grew more distant. Inside their tiny double coffin of a hiding place, Fred and Walter allowed themselves the comfort of a smile.
The relief never lasted long. All through the evening and into that first night, the sounds of footsteps and barking dogs would come nearer, then grow distant; rising and falling, louder then softer, then louder again, as the searchers kept returning to this same corner of the camp. Walter liked to think he could sense frustration in the voices of the SS men as they probed the same ground, again and again. He would hear them cursing as they gave a second and then a third poke to a pile of timbers or roof tiles, sweeping an area they had already swept twice before.
Both of them were desperate to flex or stretch, but hardly dared. Walter longed to warm his ice-cold hands and feet, but even the slightest movement saw his whole body gripped with searing cramp. If one of them dozed, the other would remain taut with tension, listening for any hint of movement nearby. Even sleep brought no rest, just nightmares of an endless present, stuck in this subterranean box: hellish below ground, worse still above.
They heard the morning shift begin, the familiar sounds of forced labour. This area was a construction site, and it soon echoed to the banging of timber, the clanking of metal, the barking of dogs and the shouting of the SS and their henchmen . Fred and Walter reckoned that the risk that their woodpile would be disturbed by slave workers was minimal – these planks were not earmarked for use any time soon – but they could hardly relax. Perhaps ten hours passed before the noise quieted and the Kommando marched back to barracks.
Throughout, the two men kept still, knowing that back in the inner camp the SS would be searching every hut, store, washroom, latrine and shed, turning every barrack building upside down. Naturally there was a system: the method was to search in a series of ever decreasing circles, with the sniffer dogs in the middle of the pack, closing in on their prey. And once they got to the centre of the smallest circle, they would start all over again.
The Nazis came so close, so often, Walter considered it a wonder he and Fred had not been discovered hours ago. Fred saw it differently. ‘Stupid bastards !’ he said when it was safe to break the silence. Perhaps it was bravado. Twenty-four hours in, Fred was no more able to eat or drink than Walter. They had stashed some provisions in this narrow passage: several pounds of bread , carefully rationed into chunks, as well as some margarine and a bottle filled with cold coffee . But, such were their nerves, neither had the stomach to touch a thing.
Somehow the hours dragged their way through Saturday to reach Sunday. Now the pair decided to take a chance. For the first time since the sirens sounded, they emerged from the side cavity into the relative expanse of the bunker itself. Even though Walter had tried to fill the gaps in the wall and the ceiling with the treated tobacco, he had not plugged them all: some of the frosty morning mist seeped through.
They were so stiff from lying still. Fred could not move his right arm and he had lost all feeling in his fingers . Walter massaged his companion’s shoulder to get the blood circulating. They did not linger in the larger space for long.
The SS kept up the search. Fred and Walter froze as they heard two men, Germans, a matter of yards away. It was in the early afternoon, and they could pick up every word.
‘They can’t have got away ,’ said one. ‘They must be still in the camp.’
The Germans began speculating about Fred and Walter’s likely hiding places. One was clearly pointing to something. ‘How about that pile of wood?’
Walter and Fred did not move.
‘Do you think they might be hiding under there?’ the second voice said. ‘Maybe they built themselves a little alcove.’
The first one thought it unlikely. After all, he mused out loud, and not inaccurately: ‘The dogs have been over it a dozen times.’ Unless, that is, the missing Jews had found some ingenious way to put the dogs off the scent.
Then some words of resolve, a declaration that it was ‘worth trying’ and the sound of two men scrambling to get nearer.
Once more, Walter grabbed his knife. Fred did the same.
The two Germans climbed on top of the woodpile, which they proceeded to dismantle, board by board. They took off the first layer, then the second, then, with some effort, the third and fourth.
If it had come ten seconds later, it would have been too late. Not for the first time, indeed this may have been the eighth or ninth time, Walter’s life was saved by a random moment of good luck, in this case one that could not have been more perfectly timed.