Questions sped through Walter’s mind as the minutes ticked by. What if the petrol-soaked tobacco eventually lost its scent? What if one of those who knew about this hiding place cracked? And why had Walter thought it a good idea to bring a watch with luminous hands, which meant that he and Fred could see just how glacially the minutes were passing?
The next morning, hunched in their hole in the ground, Walter and Fred heard a familiar sound: the heavy rumble of a convoy of trucks ferrying the condemned from the Judenrampe to the gas chambers. Their hideout was just a short distance north-east of Crematoria IV and V. The Jews were still arriving, still stumbling out of the trains that brought them here from all points across Europe, still standing to be assessed and selected, still climbing on board the vehicles that would carry them to their deaths.
Walter counted the trucks as they went past. Then, an hour or two later, he heard the clash of metal against metal, as the iron racks carrying corpse upon corpse were rattled into the ovens where they would be turned into smoke and ash. All the pair of them could do was listen, rigid and mute. （What they had heard was the incineration of 319 people: Jews from Belgium , fifty-four of them children.）
The killing continued but so did the search that Saturday, the sounds of it – boots, dogs, shouts – echoing and ricocheting around Mexico, sometimes reverberating against the uncompleted and as yet uninhabited wooden barracks, sometimes resonating directly above their heads.
When 5 p.m. on Monday finally came, the end of the working day signalled by the sound of the band playing another cheerful ditty , every note a taunt to the men who had been whipped and beaten into a day of brutal labour, there was a new worry. Now, Walter knew, there would be another roll call. If any other prisoner were missing, if anyone else had attempted an escape, he and Fred would be back to the beginning: the outer perimeter would stay manned for another three days. So they waited, desperate that there be no new siren. The hands on the watch crawled so slowly, it seemed time itself had stopped. But no alarm was sounded.
They looked up at the ceiling. It was so tempting, but Walter was firm: too risky. Not until 9 p.m., after fully eighty hours concealed in that small hole in the ground, did Walter and Fred decide it was safe to move.
Opening up their hideaway was harder than they had bargained for, and not only because of the weight of the boards, stacked above their heads. Those three days spent lying still had taken their toll. Their muscles had atrophied. The boards now seemed unnaturally heavy, shifting them all but impossible. Each shove brought a fierce, tingling pain . Their legs trembled; they seemed unable to support their own weight. Habit and caution – because there might still be a regular patrol passing nearby – made them want to do the work silently. Which made it harder still.
They looked at the bread and coffee they had set aside, safer to consume now. They were both painfully hungry and desperately thirsty. But when they attempted to take a sip, or eat even a little, both men found the same trouble: they were not able to swallow. It was as if their bodies had turned in on themselves, as if their innards had coiled up and closed.
And yet they could not afford to wait much longer. The night hours were all they had. Come dawn, and the start of another working day, the outer perimeter would be manned once more, the guns of the watchtowers locked and loaded. They had to get out now.
Working together, shoving in unison, they at last got one of the bottom boards to move. Eventually the rest followed and, with enormous effort, they pulled themselves up and out. Exhausted from the exertion and the three days’ confinement, the two men allowed themselves a short moment to sit on the woodpile that had protected them and look out. They paused to take in the night sky. It was clear; the moon was shining .
They needed to get going, but first they put the boards back in their original position. Part of it was a determination to be thorough, to leave no clue for those who would be here the next morning. But part of it was the hope that this small concealed hole might serve as an escape hatch for someone else. Fred Wetzler and Walter Rosenberg were on their way to becoming the first Jews to engineer their own escape from Auschwitz. They did not want to be the last.
They headed west, out of Mexico and towards the little birch wood that gave Birkenau its name. They advanced not on foot, but on their stomachs, inching along, commando style. No needless risks now. They did not get up until they had reached the trees, the same small forest that held the pits that had burned corpses day and night. Now they went into a careful, crouching run until they hit open ground, which sent them back on to their bellies. They could see so little.
They ran into a fresh obstacle. They could not be sure if it was a road or a frozen river. There was no snow on the ground and yet its surface was glistening in the moonlight . About eight yards wide, it seemed to extend far into the distance, both to the left and to the right. Yet it yielded no ripple or sound. Low to the ground, Walter stretched a hand to it, bracing for the cold.
But the touch surprised him. For this was no river but rather a ribbon of sand. Was it a minefield? Or was it more cunning than lethal, a stretch of sand laid down to record any attempt at a breakout, preserving the fugitives’ footprints, revealing their direction of travel?
There was no way to walk around it; it was too long for that. There was only one option. Walter went first, treading gingerly. He tried to make himself light, a burglar striving not to wake the house. Finally, he reached the other side. He looked back at Fred, who then repeated the manoeuvre, taking care to place each foot in the print left by Walter. That way, they hoped to avoid any mines and, who knows, maybe confuse the chasing SS men who would inevitably follow.
Soon they were at the inner ditch that bounded the perimeter of the camp. They followed it, until it brought them at last to a fence.
It was not like the ones they had known from the inner camp. It did not have electric lights attached to each post; the wire was not electrified. Even so, the pair were taking no chances. They had fashioned in advance something that could function as a kind of clothes peg , protecting their hands as, working from the bottom, they lifted the wire above the ground. That made an opening big enough for each of them to crawl through.
Now they were on the other side of the fence. They would stay close to it, walking a near complete circuit around the camp. Before long, they passed the inner camp, the lights that marked its perimeter warm and glowing. If you did not know better, the sight could almost look cosy, given the barren bleakness all around. Except they did know better. For they could also see the chimneys of the crematoria, pumping out their greenish-blue, oil-refinery flames and their thick smoke of death. The pair took a last look, as clear as they had ever been that they never wanted to see this place again .
They kept on, walking as stealthily as they could, their limbs still stiff, slowed down by the marshy terrain . At about two o’clock in the morning , crossing open moorland, they reached a signpost with a warning to those coming in the opposite direction: Attention! This is Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Anyone found on these lands will be shot without warning!
It had taken them far too long, but they had at last reached the end of the vast ‘zone of interest’ that enveloped the camp. For a moment at least, they could congratulate themselves. On 10 April 1944 they had each achieved what no Jew had ever done before: they had broken out of Auschwitz.