The room fell silent. Eventually one detainee laughed, as if taking pity on a young child. ‘He wants to go home!’
‘Jesus,’ said another. ‘That’s all we need. A bloody troublemaker !’
Walter kept his plans to himself after that. Nevertheless, and though he was the newest arrival in this place thanks to his failed effort to make it across the border, he retained full confidence in his ability to pull off what none of these men had apparently even considered. He was convinced he could escape.
There were advantages to being poor, alone and seventeen. One of them was that when the Hlinka Guards on the door demanded someone from the barracks go to the labour camp and help bring back food, Walter was the obvious choice. He was young and fit and, even the grumpiest of his fellow inmates recognised, he needed a break: he had no one to look out for him.
He used his very first trip across the divide for reconnaissance. He was struck by how open the labour camp was, open to the daylight and the sunshine, with a clear view of the surrounding wheatfields. More important, Walter spotted immediately that the perimeter of this part of the camp was marked out by a barbed-wire fence that was, at least to his teenage eye, pathetically inadequate . Better still, he could see only a single guard tasked with patrolling it. One man, guarding a boundary that was a thousand yards long. Within the closed universe of Nováky, there was a perverse logic to it. Everyone wanted to get out of the transit camp so they could make it into the labour camp. Once they had, why would they want to escape?
Walter was tempted to make a run for it there and then. He reckoned he was capable of it, and he knew there was no time to waste: he could be pushed on to a deportation train at any hour of any day. Still, he had learned from his previous, abortive efforts at escape: preparation was all. He would need a plan. And he would need an ally.
In the cramped, crowded transit barracks he had run into Josef Knapp, a young man from Walter’s own birthplace of Topol’？any who, like him, had dreamed of freedom in Britain, and who, like him, had tried to find it by fleeing through Hungary, and who, like him, had failed. Young Josef, tall and good-looking, was pining for the girlfriend he had left behind in Topol’？any. In one conversation, he let slip that he had money. He had evaded the initial body-search on arrival at Nováky; he had managed to hide some cash. For Walter, he was the ideal co-conspirator.
Now a plan began to take shape. Walter would persuade the guard that the food run he had been doing between the transit and labour camps had become a two-person job, what with all the new arrivals. The guard, seeing no threat to what mattered to him most – his own daily access to the kitchen and all its wares – nodded the proposal through. Now Walter and Josef would be able to cross into the Nováky labour camp together and unhindered.
Once they had, it was easy. The solo guard on the perimeter fence was nowhere to be seen, which meant the pair could simply duck under the wire and run as fast as they could. After three minutes, they reached a stream bringing fresh water from the forest. They slid down its banks, crossed and kept on running. No more than ten minutes after that, they were plunged deep into the woods, the light of the sun dappled by the trees and the only noise the sound of their own laughter. They had done it. They had broken free.
They kept walking. Eventually, and following their plan, they split up: Josef would go to a village where he had friends who would hide him, Walter would catch a train to Topol’？any, to find Zuzka, Josef’s girlfriend. Josef himself did not dare show his face there: too likely that someone would recognise him and turn him in. Walter would then sit tight in Topol’？any and before long Josef would send word – and money. With that, Walter could then complete the journey he had tried and failed to make weeks ago: he would go back to Trnava, and pick up the false Aryan papers arranged by his socialist contacts in Budapest.
Walter did as he was told, finding Zuzka’s home and knocking on her door. She went off to see her boyfriend, while Walter waited patiently, dependent on the goodwill of her parents – both non-Jews who were taking a great risk harbouring him.
He waited and waited. But Josef never did send word or money. Walter soon understood that he had been betrayed. He said goodbye to the girl’s parents, and the shed where they had hidden him, and decided to fend for himself in the town where he had been born.
He managed a few hours before making a big mistake. He went into a milk bar to refresh himself. Except a Slovak gendarme was there at the same time. Walter tried to leave as inconspicuously as he could, but it was no good. The policeman followed him out, demanding to see Walter’s papers.
Walter ran for it, but it was an uneven contest. The gendarme had a bike and soon caught up with him, taking him to the station and into custody. Before handing him over, he asked Walter if he knew what had given him away. Walter shook his head. It turned out that the policeman had noticed that he was wearing two pairs of socks on a warm, summer’s day. Why would anyone do such a thing, unless they were on the run?
Inside the police station, they seemed to know all about him. There had been a warrant out for his arrest, including a full description of the escapee Walter Rosenberg. It had been circulated throughout the country the instant he had slipped under the barbed wire of Nováky. His escape had made him a wanted man.
That night they locked him in a cell, then locked the police station and left him unwatched and unguarded. Their parting gift was a few cigarettes for company, and a warning not to take his own life.
The following day they handed Walter Rosenberg over to the Hlinka Guards. The journey was brief, the train accomplishing in minutes what had taken him and Josef many long hours. For all the ingenuity of his escape, he was back behind that wire fence, back in Nováky. He was a prisoner once more.
3
Deported
W ALTER TOOK IT as a compliment. His return to Nováky was greeted with a bespoke beating from the Hlinka guardsmen whose reputation had been dented by his escape. They avenged their humiliation by punching and kicking him, taking it in turns, whacking him with the butt of their rifles, stopping only with the arrival of a commanding officer who seemed anxious that they not pummel their captive to death. Word of a murdered prisoner would spread through Nováky, among those held in the transit camp in particular, and that could cause panic which, for reasons Walter would come to understand, was the last thing those overseeing the deportation wanted. And so the beating concluded, with orders that Walter be held in a special cell – just him and one other man – and that he be put on the next transport.
Sure enough, when the next train pulled in, collecting Jews to be shipped off, his name was on the list. His captors were determined that Walter Rosenberg would not make fools of them a second time. On the railway platform, while every other Jew on the transport lined up to be processed and have their papers examined, Walter was assigned his own personal Hlinka Guard who, armed with a sub-machine gun, stood watch over him and him alone. When the moment of departure came, the Hlinka Guards had a final word of advice, tailored just for him.
‘Try to escape again and you’re a dead duck ,’ they said. Once more, Walter chose to be flattered by the degree of attention.
It would be wrong to talk of passengers ‘boarding’ that train. The Jews of Nováky were cargo and they were loaded as such. They did not sit in carriages, but were packed in wagons. Walter’s rough estimate – and he was good at guessing numbers – was that there were eighty of them jammed into that single wagon, along with all their luggage. They were cheek by jowl, head to armpit.