?liás returned to the office. There was no question of making the report public: clerics more senior than him had decided earlier that information they had picked up about mass killings of Jews was not to be shared lest it cause panic in Jewish circles and make any rescue effort impossible. So ?liás beckoned a young colleague into a small room where they would not be overheard. She was Mária Székely, a volunteer at the Mission fluent in several languages, and he asked her to read the text he pulled out of his briefcase, then tell him whether she would be able to translate it. A few hours later, and looking ill with shock, she said she would. She felt it was her duty .
She found that first read of the report agonising . She knew translating it would require absolute concentration so she took the text away to the attic room she rented from a family on ?rmelléki Street, where she could work on it day and night for a week. She had heard the odd rumour, but now, laid before her, was the total and terrible reality set out in a dry text, apparently drained of feeling, as if, or so it seemed to her, the authors were presenting a recipe for the baking of bread. The language was not florid or colourful. She resolved to echo that same, spare register in her translation.
The drawings were a challenge. She had no talent for it, and after working for days on end her eyes were so tired, but with the help of tracing paper, she somehow pressed the illustrations into the purple carbon sheets she had threaded through her typewriter. Slowly, in that garret, the Hungarian edition of the Auschwitz Report began to take shape.
The work was laborious, the attic room stuffy. Székely had to go outside. She went down to the small, ground-floor terrace, clutching her papers and a dictionary. It was breezy and suddenly the wind snatched a page of the original German text, including a telltale drawing of Auschwitz. It flew against the wire garden fence where it got stuck. At that moment, an armed German soldier was walking on the other side of the boundary, on guard duty. Székely had forgotten that the Germans now occupied all the houses on ?rmelléki Street.
She rushed towards the fence, but it was too late. The Nazi guard had got there first. He reached over and dislodged the piece of paper. He would only have to look at it to know that this document contained the secret of Auschwitz, that this woman and her associates had discovered it. Obviously she would be arrested, along with ?liás and anyone else involved. Worst, the Auschwitz Report would be stopped in its tracks.
Terrified, Székely braced herself for what was to come. But the soldier did not so much as look at the piece of paper. He handed it back to her with a polite smile. She took it, went back inside and, with the adrenaline of fear rushing through her veins, set about getting the job done.
Once the Hungarian text was complete, she gave the five copies to ?liás as requested, and headed to Géza Soós to give him the sixth plus the German original. Except his office was near the royal residence and security was tight. A guard checked her papers. If he had asked to go through the contents of her bag, she – and the report – would have been done for. But somehow she got through.
Now came the moment to put the document in the hands of those senior clerics. At first, the operation made great headway. The leading Protestant bishop responded immediately, writing to the prime minister on 17 May, urging the government to stop the deportations which were, he now knew thanks to the Auschwitz Report, the first step to mass slaughter. But in the same letter he threw away what could have been the church’s most powerful weapon: he vowed that he would not make the plight of the Jews public.
Still, the big prize was landing the report in front of the Catholic cardinal, Archbishop Jusztinián Serédi, which the secret network of activists achieved by the middle of May 1944. Three concerned Christians, two priests and a journalist, asked for an audience. They would urge Serédi to act on what they all now knew.
The trio went to the castle in Buda that served as the cardinal’s official residence, where they were received with full ceremony. Serédi entered and held out his finger. The men lowered themselves to their knees and kissed his ring. The cardinal sat down and signalled for them to begin.
They explained that the Protestant leadership was considering an edict denying communion to any official or worker who helped the Germans round up the Jews or detain members of the resistance. Perhaps the cardinal should issue a similar ruling in the name of Hungary’s Catholics?
Serédi was silent for a long time. The air seemed to thicken as the delegation waited for his answer. Finally, he tore his biretta from his head and threw it to the ground.
‘If the pope himself does not undertake anything against Hitler, what can I do?’ he said. He cursed in exasperation: ‘Hell! ’
The cardinal picked his biretta off the floor and apologised for his loss of control. He wanted to help, but he could not. His hands were tied.
Later, at the beginning of June, the trio saw Serédi again, once more at the castle. By now, the danger to the Jews was not merely imminent; it was clear and present. The deportation trains had been rumbling out of Hungary in earnest since 15 May, more than a month after Fred and Rudi had made their escape. Their report had made plain what fate awaited those on board. The first transports had deported the Jews of the provinces, and now word had come that the Jews of Budapest would be next: the city was filling up with armed police fresh from the countryside. At least save the children, the trio pleaded. Take them under the protection of the church, so that they might be spirited to some neutral country, perhaps Switzerland or Sweden.
If I could do anything, I would, the cardinal said. But any plan we might come up with, the Germans would thwart.
At that moment, the sirens sounded. The city was under attack. The group rushed to the basement, where the archbishop sank to his knees and began to pray. He stayed like that, praying, until the air raid was over, two hours later. He might have used that time to thrash out a strategy with the other three or, failing that, to write a rousing public address to his flock, one that would have spelled out what the Nazis were about to do to their Jewish fellow Hungarians and demanded they rise up to prevent it. But the cardinal stayed on his knees.
Apparently, the Catholic church would not move unless the pope himself was moved. If only he or one of his aides could hear from Vrba and Wetzler directly, then, surely, Rome would act. In the middle of June, nearly two months after his escape from Auschwitz, Rudi would have precisely that chance.
It would come just as the report changed shape. For that document was about to grow stronger, fed by the only source that counted. Soon it would contain not only a prediction or warning of the fate of Hungarian Jewry but fresh, hard proof – and it would come from inside Auschwitz.
22
What Can I Do?
W HEN THE SIRENS had sounded in Birkenau on 7 April 1944, signalling that a prisoner or prisoners had been missing from roll call and that there had been another attempted escape, the whispers started immediately. Who could it be?
It did not take long for word to spread. The fugitives were Walter Rosenberg and Alfréd Wetzler. That last name left one prisoner in particular flabbergasted . Czes?aw Mordowicz was a Polish Jew and a close friend of Wetzler’s. They were both block registrars – Fred for Block 9, Czes?aw for Block 18 – and they used to meet and chat every day. Czes?aw had never picked up so much as the thought of escape from Fred, let alone a plan. Yet here he was, apparently gone. Mordowicz thought about how much his fellow record-keeper knew of Auschwitz and thrilled at the prospect that he might get away. Finally , Czes?aw said to himself, the great secret of this cursed place will be uncovered before the world .