In the daytime, the set-up changed. Now the inner ring of sentry posts was vacated, the SS manning instead the wider ring of tall, transportable wooden watchtowers that circled the outer camp, monitoring the terrain where prisoners undertook forced labour from first light until evening. The towers were placed at eighty-yard intervals, all the way along the four miles of outer perimeter. An apron of clear space, barren scrubland, lay just inside this fence, so that any prisoner who attempted to make a run for it would be spotted instantly and gunned down. Indeed, any prisoner who got within ten yards of the outer cordon would be shot without warning .
The security protocol never varied. The inner camp was guarded at night, the outer camp during the day. In the hours of darkness, there was no need to watch over the outer camp. After all, every last prisoner had been herded back inside the inner camp. There was no one in the outer camp.
Only one circumstance would make the SS deviate from that system. If an inmate was missing, presumed to have attempted an escape, the SS would keep up the outer ring of armed sentry posts while the area was searched. It would stay like that for seventy-two hours. Only then would the SS conclude that the escapee had got away, passing the baton to the SS men already scoping the terrain beyond Auschwitz. At that moment, the outer cordon would come down, the security perimeter shrinking back to the inner camp. The outer camp would be unguarded once more.
It was the only break in what was otherwise a watertight seal. If a prisoner could somehow hide in that outer area, waiting out those three days and nights after the alarm had been raised, even while the SS and their murderous dogs combed every inch of the terrain, he would emerge on that fourth night into an outer camp that was deserted and unwatched. He would have his chance to break free.
This, then, was the premise of the attempt that Walter would mount. He and Fred would inveigle their way into the outer camp. Once there, they would secrete themselves in a designated hiding place and wait for three days and nights. Only when it was clear that the SS had called off the search and the outer camp was restored to empty silence would they come out.
The groundwork had been done by four others, who had spotted that same all-important weak point in the security set-up. Three of them worked as delivery boys for the morgue: their task was to travel around the many sub-camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, collecting corpses, before delivering them, on handcarts, to the mortuary in the main men’s hospital. It meant they had the same relative freedom of movement as Fred and Walter.
It was while on their travels that they entered a new Auschwitz territory, a land fast becoming known as Mexico. The camp there was under construction: it was to be Birkenau III, ready to house the expected surge of Hungarian prisoners, and the inmates quartered in this unfinished site had been given no clothes at all. All they could do was wrap themselves in coloured blankets: to the long-time Auschwitz population, they looked like indigenous, ‘Indian’ Mexicans. Hence: Mexico .
The three corpse-carriers were in Mexico when they encountered a fourth man known only as Citrin, doubly condemned as both a Soviet prisoner of war and a Jew. He told of his determination to escape – and of the discovery he had made.
The place was part building site, part lumber yard. All over, and stacked in piles, were the panels that would be assembled into quick-build huts. But Citrin had seen that in one spot there was a crater carved into the ground, perhaps a shell-hole, which the group rapidly resolved to line and cover with a combination of wooden planks and door frames . Before long, they had constructed an underground shelter that could hold four people and that was well camouflaged. Next, they kitted it out, starting with a few blankets. Then, no doubt at the prompting of the Russian among them, they scattered the surrounding ground with Soviet tobacco soaked in petrol.
The Red Army man was the guinea pig. On 1 March 1944, he climbed in. His three comrades, Alexander ‘Sándor’ Eisenbach , Abraham Gotzel and Jacob Balaban, covered up the opening with extra boards and returned to camp. The trio listened out, waiting for the sirens at evening roll call that meant a prisoner was missing. Sure enough, the sounds came: Citrin’s absence had been noticed.
Out went the search teams: armed SS men, Alsatian dogs, all on the hunt for the Russian prisoner who had disappeared. The animals, their nostrils usually aquiver at the merest scent of a human, were led astray by the aroma of the petrol-soaked tobacco. It drove them away. And so Citrin remained in his bunker, undiscovered.
The next day, the other three men decided to risk it. Sick of carting around the flesh and bones of the dead, they would seize their chance of life. Eisenbach, Gotzel and Balaban climbed into the hole.
That night, the roll call was again interrupted by that same piercing sound, more urgent this time as it announced that a further three men were missing. Back out went the SS search party: officers, Kapos , dogs, all under lights, scouring the entire area up to the ring of watchtowers that marked the outer perimeter. They came heart-stoppingly close. But once again, they found nothing.
It was day three, and the men were still in hiding in that cramped, covered hole in the ground. In one of several departures from the unwritten manual taught to Walter by Captain Volkov, they had confided the core part of their plan to a few trusted allies, Fred and Walter among them. Eisenbach, a fellow Slovak, had asked that Walter keep an eye on their secret hideout, that he warn them if they were in danger. And so, in the hours of safety, Walter would stroll over to the woodpile and, while appearing to study his paperwork, would whisper a word of greeting. A faint voice would answer back. It gave Walter great pleasure to tell the voice that the SS and their dogs had walked past the timbers a dozen times , but they had never taken so much as a proper look.
The four men remained still as afternoon became evening. They were waiting to hear the magic words, which finally echoed around the deserted camp once night had fallen: Postenkette abziehen! Postenkette abziehen! Vacate the guard posts!
The quartet waited a bit longer and only once they were absolutely sure they could hear no sound, that every last SS man had gone, did they push at the timbers that had been refashioned into a ceiling for their hideout. As quietly as they could, and one by one, they clambered out. Carefully, they replaced the planks so that they looked exactly as they had before: no more than a haphazard pile of wood. Then, in the pitch black, they stole into the night. Soon, they were out of Auschwitz.
Their initial destination was the town of K? ty. The Polish-speaker among them, Balaban, must have broken the captain’s golden rule – avoid contact with other people at all costs – and with bad results, because he rapidly came to the conclusion that they could not expect any help from the surrounding population: they were on their own. They headed for the border with Slovakia.
But soon their luck ran out. Near the small town of Por? bka, they ran into a group of German foresters, who had only to see the shaved heads and tattooed arms of the four men to summon the police. It all happened too fast for the fugitives to fight back or to run; they had been caught entirely by surprise. Before they knew it, the Germans had them bound and chained, waiting for the authorities to arrive.
The next few minutes were crucial. The would-be escapees somehow found a way to dump the cash and valuables they had taken for the journey （a move that had been another inadvertent departure from the Volkov escape manual）。 They also got their story straight.