The pair were paralysed, stuck in the bushes, not daring to move. Then, as if in answer to a prayer, rain began to fall. Gentle at first, no more than a shower, certainly not enough to deter the young believers of the Hitlerjugend. But soon the heavens opened and a torrent of rain sent Nazism’s next generation scurrying for shelter.
It was too risky to linger. Breaking one of the Volkov rules against daytime travel, Fred and Walter marched on, grateful for their coats and caps against the cold, and for their boots as the ground turned to mud and bog.
Once they had found a sufficiently dense patch of bushes, they decided to catch up on the sleep that should have begun at dawn. It was 11 April.
They tried to get back on track, journeying after dark, stopping to drink from a stream when they crossed one, otherwise cleaving to the route, if not the banks, of the So?a. On their second night they lost the river and strayed too far west, edging dangerously close to the small village of Jawiszowice. Dangerous, because Jawischowitz, as the Nazis had renamed it, was one of the thirty-nine sub-camps of Auschwitz: an SS-operated coal mine where, around the time Fred and Walter approached, some 2,500 slaves laboured, most of them Jews. The fugitives had wandered into an all-too-familiar compound of barracks, barbed wire, electric lights and watchtowers . The sentry posts were empty for now, because it was night-time. But few knew better than Fred and Walter that daybreak would bring the day shift of armed SS guards.
They fought to ward off panic. But each route they took seemed to lead them back to another fence or guard tower. Morning was coming; they had to get away. But it was so hard to see. They were on unknown terrain in an unfamiliar country, with no guide and no equipment.
They saw a wood that at least looked to be outside the boundaries of the camp. They went inside, found a spot, ate a small portion of the bread and margarine they had had with them since they first went into the bunker, but which had to be rationed carefully, then broke off a few branches, covered themselves as best they could and hoped to sleep until dusk. To keep them both calm, or perhaps to allow their minds to float far away, Fred would talk in those closed, hidden hours of chess . He was the teacher, Walter his pupil, his voice soothing and reassuring until first one and then the other fell asleep.
That was the plan, at any rate. But as the sun grew brighter, it became clear that this was no secluded wooded grove. On the contrary, blinded by the darkness earlier, they had chosen to hide themselves in a public park. Its clientele were the new masters of the region, SS men with their wives and children, out for a stroll during the Easter holiday week. Fred and Walter had escaped an SS death camp only to walk into an SS playground.
They swiftly assessed the danger. Given where they were hiding, they determined that the chief threats were dogs, who might sniff them out, and children: all it would take was a misplaced ball to roll in their direction and they would be done for.
Sure enough, a little boy and a young girl came bounding by, giggling and playing, getting close, then wandering away, then coming back again. Walter’s heart was thumping.
Suddenly they were there, right in front of them, the two, blue-eyed children gawping at Fred and Walter. A moment later, they were haring off to find their father who, Walter could see, wore the uniform of an SS-Oberscharführer , right down to his regulation pistol.
‘Papa, Papa , come here,’ the girl was saying. ‘There are men in the bushes.’
The SS man approached. Reflexively, both Fred and Walter pulled out their knives.
The children’s father came close enough that he was now staring directly into their eyes. They stared back. The silence seemed to last for long minutes. Finally, a look of comprehension, harsh in its judgement, spread across the face of the SS squad leader. Walter watched him shoo away his children and then consult his blonde wife, whose pursed lips left no doubt as to what her husband had just told her. The shocked family hurried away, scandalised that two men would bed down together so brazenly in a public park, and with children around too. They must have considered it an assault on the otherwise impeccable morals of the new Germany.
It was too risky to attempt to relocate. That would mean emerging from the bushes and getting noticed. Fred and Walter stayed where they were till nightfall, when the walking could begin again.
The trouble was, sticking to the path of the So?a was easier on the page of an atlas than in real life. They kept getting lost. There was comfort, for example, in seeing the lights of Bielsko, about twenty miles south of Auschwitz, because that confirmed they were roughly on the right track. The plan was always to avoid human contact, which meant steering around places rather than marching right into them. And yet, once the night grew late and the lights of Bielsko dimmed, Fred and Walter became disorientated. Soon, and very suddenly, they found themselves right inside the town. They were surrounded by streets and buildings and, therefore, hundreds of pairs of eyes, ready to spot them – and betray them.
They tried to go back the way they had come, to retreat once more into the anonymous countryside. But in their confusion and in the darkness they could not seem to do it. Wherever they turned, there was another building, and then another. It would only be a matter of time before they ran into men with guns, whether the SS or their Polish collaborators, it hardly made much difference.
For now, their prime opponent was the dawn. They could not risk being caught in this maze of Bielsko streets in the light of day. They had to get out.
They only half managed it. As the sun came up on Thursday 13 April, they had escaped the town but only as far as the nearby village of Pisarzowice. True, there were fewer people to spot them, but the pair were more visible now that it was morning. They would have to hide and that meant breaking one of Volkov’s most solemn rules: they would have to make contact with a stranger.
But which one? There was no way of weighing up the options; this would have to be a decision taken at random. They would have to pick a front door and try it. If they got it wrong, and a newly installed Volksdeutsche answered, they would surely be done for. But even if they got lucky and a local Pole opened up, that could spell trouble too. The rules of the occupying power were clear: any Pole found harbouring, or even assisting, a Jew would be executed. Conversely, a Pole who found a Jew in hiding and gave them up would be rewarded for doing so: the going rate was a kilo of sugar or perhaps a bottle of vodka. So which house to pick? Make a mistake, and it could be fatal.
They decided to try a tumbledown peasant cottage where there were chickens outside and even a wandering goose. Rather than give a formal knock, Fred and Walter wandered round the back, picking their way through the animals. They saw there a woman clad in black, her head scarved, with a teenage daughter lurking anxiously behind.
It was not just Walter who had a knack for languages. Fred too was sufficiently adept in Polish that they both knew the right way to introduce themselves.
‘Praise be the name of Jesus Christ,’ the two Jews from Slovakia said.
‘May His name be praised for ever, amen,’ the woman said in reply.
She ushered them in, which was the first good sign. The second came when she said, ‘I’m afraid my Russian is not very good.’
It was probably their accents that had given them away: she knew they were not Polish. But there would have been other signs too. They were wearing expensive, though now dirty, clothes and they were stopping at a random house in the middle of nowhere. It must have been obvious that they were on the run. That they were Soviet escapees from a prisoner-of-war camp was not a bad guess, and a convenient one for Fred and Walter. Better she think that than guess the truth.