The next day, they stayed indoors, waiting for the old man to return. He fed them and then, once it was dark, they set off, having promised to do exactly what he told them. They headed back into the mountains by first crossing the railway tracks near Milówka. Without proper shoes, Walter struggled to keep up.
At one point, their guide signalled for them to stop. A German patrol passed through this area every ten minutes, he warned. They would hide, watch it pass, and then they would have a nine-minute interval to get clear. This, he explained, was the Nazis’ great flaw: they stuck to routine so faithfully, their movements were predictable. Walter and Fred could nod to that: their entire escape plan had been predicated on it.
The three men concealed themselves in some bushes and watched as the Pole’s observation came good. As if on cue, German soldiers marched by. If Walter and Fred had any last doubts over the wisdom of trusting this man, they fell away.
They took the occasional break, as the man went into the woods, returning with food: apparent confirmation that there were partisans nearby. As they ate, the man offered in an even voice his theory that the two of them were probably the fugitives who had escaped from the camp at O? wi? cim on 7 April. He gestured towards their sleeves, under which were their tattooed numbers, as if to show that he too knew all about Auschwitz, perhaps even that he had been a prisoner there himself. They asked for his name, so that one day they might thank him. He said only that he was called Tadeusz . Of course. That was the unwritten rule: no names, no addresses, on either side. That way, if either they, or he, were captured and tortured by the Nazis, they would have nothing to reveal.
The trio pressed on, covering some eight miles in the darkness, until it was the morning of Friday 21 April. They had been together two days and now they had reached a clearing. The old man pointed at a forest, no more than fifty yards away, and said the words they had longed to hear: ‘That’s Slovakia .’
There was nothing to stop them. No fence, no border post. They could sprint over there right now, and they would be out of occupied Poland once and for all. But their guide had two more instructions. First, he said, the German patrols were as regular here as anywhere else, but the intervals were longer. Every three hours, one would pass. The only guarantee of safety was to hang back, hide in the trees, watch the patrol come and go and then make a run for it.
Once they had crossed the border, they were to head for the village of Skalité. There they were to look for house number 264 , where they would find a man who could be trusted and who would give them food and clothes. They were to say that ‘The living hillsman from Milówka’ had sent them. And with that, his voice cracking slightly, ‘Tadeusz’ said goodbye.
Fred and Walter did as they were told. They watched the patrol pass, waited a moment or two and then headed up the dark hillside opposite. They had not been walking long, perhaps ten minutes, when they saw embedded in the ground the short, stubby stone posts – a ‘P’ on one side, an ‘S’ on the other – that marked the border between Poland and the land of their birth. They crossed in broad daylight, at nine o’clock in the morning.
Did they feel euphoric? They felt relieved. They were no longer in the same country as Auschwitz. But they could feel little joy. Though it was not occupied by the Nazis, Slovakia was still run by the Nazis’ allies, the same home-grown fascists led by Father Jozef Tiso who had longed for and organised the expulsion of Fred and Walter, their families, their friends. This was still the country that had let that happen.
Every move they would make was fraught with risk. The Hlinka Guards had not gone away. Besides, they could not remain under cover of darkness here, even with the trusted friend Tadeusz had mentioned. They needed to make contact with the remnant Jews of Slovakia, those who had somehow evaded deportation and clung on, and that need would force them into the open.
And so they kept walking, through the woods along the hillside ridge, until they began the descent into the border village of Skalité, with its few, scattered houses, a gentle stream and an onion-domed church. The state of their clothes, ripped and torn now, and Walter in his tattered slippers, a pair of boots slung over his shoulder, announced them as strangers. The proximity of the Polish border filled in the rest.
They found the house, uttered the password – invoking ‘The living hillsman of Milówka’ – and were taken in by farmer Ondrej ? aneck?. He told his guests to wash, while he gave each of them a change of clothes: peasant garb that would allow them to pass for locals. Over a meal, Fred and Walter explained that they needed to meet whatever semblance of a Jewish community they could find: they needed to get word to them, urgently. ? aneck? replied that the doctor in ? adca was a Jew by the name of Pollack.
That name rang an instant bell. Back in Nováky, there had been a Dr Pollack scheduled to be on the same transport that took Walter to Majdanek. And yet his name had been removed from the list at the last moment. It turned out that the authorities made a sudden exception for Jewish physicians, bowing to pressure from the Slovak public, especially in rural areas, who overnight found they had no medical care. Tiso had not reckoned with the fact that, though Jews made up only a small portion of Slovakia’s population, they accounted for a big share of the country’s doctors. The president reprieved those Jewish medics who had not already been deported, despatching them to small towns and villages. Given all that, it was wholly believable that the same Dr Pollack was in ? adca. And if he was, then that was the obvious place to start. They needed to get to ? adca immediately. Fred and Walter looked at each other: they should leave right away.
Hold on, said ? aneck?. If they were to travel the twenty-odd miles to ? adca the same way they had come here, by a night march through forests and woods, it would take them a full three days. But the farmer had a suggestion. Monday was market day in the town; he was planning to go there by train to sell his hogs. What if Fred and Walter hid in this cottage during the weekend, then re-emerged on Monday morning in their new peasant garb, posing as farmhands? If they stayed close to ? aneck? and his pigs, helping him and chatting away in their native Slovak, the police and their informers would barely notice them, not least because the train to ? adca was controlled by Slovak gendarmes rather than Germans.
And so, on 24 April, Walter Rosenberg, the boy who had once worn his hair in payos and run errands for the local rabbi, found himself in a Slovak livestock market, herding a group of ten pigs and listening as the traders around him bantered with their customers, cheerfully rejecting a cash offer they deemed too low by asking whether the cheeky bidder was a Jew or a human being .
It worked though. ? aneck? sold his pigs and no one paid any attention to his two young helpers. He even wanted to share some of the proceeds, but Walter and Fred said no. He had risked his life for their freedom; he had done enough.
The farmer’s last good turn was to point the escapees in the direction of the doctor. His place of work was not what they were expecting or hoping for: Dr Pollack’s clinic was inside the local army barracks. Guarding the door were two soldiers of Slovakia’s pro-Nazi army. Since Walter was the one who knew Pollack, it would fall to him to walk past those men and pretend to be a patient. He girded himself and went in.