scape was lunacy, escape was death. To attempt it was suicide. That much had been taught to Walter Rosenberg early, within a week of his arrival in Auschwitz, aged just 17, at the start of July 1942. One afternoon, he and thousands of others had been forced to stand in silence and watch a public hanging, performed with full ceremony.
If time permitted, the pretence would continue as the new arrivals climbed on to the trucks that would take them to the killing sites. SS men, their manners impeccable, might help the sick clamber aboard. For those heading to the death chambers on foot, there was more reassurance in the form of inquiries about the Jews’ professional qualifications or trades back home.
As the victims followed the order to strip off their clothes, the SS would tell them that they were about to bathe, that they should stay calm and that afterwards they would be given “coffee and something to eat”. That was when a reminder would come to tie all shoes into pairs: “Afterwards you won’t have to waste time finding the other shoe.” In fact, the SS knew that the shoes of murdered children would only be of use for German families back home if they came in pairs.
The woman looked not so much scared as affronted by this intrusion from a ghoulish man in pyjama stripes, his breath foul, his head shaved, a prisoner who was surely therefore some kind of criminal. Instantly, she approached a German officer as if she were the aggrieved patron of a Prague department store, demanding to see the manager. “Officer, one of the gangsters has told me that I and my children are to be killed,” she complained, in perfect German.
Walter saw it with new clarity. The difference between truth and lies was the difference between life and death. The factory of murder that the Nazis had constructed in this accursed place depended on one cardinal principle: that the people who came to Auschwitz did not know where they were going, or for what purpose. That was the premise on which the entire system was built.
, the cheap, Soviet tobacco the Red Army captain had told him about, soaked in petrol and dried, exactly as instructed. Slowly, he began to wedge it into the cracks between the wooden boards, hoping against hope that the Soviet prisoner of war was right, that the scent would be repellent to dogs.
Our online lesson describes the geographical location of the Auschwitz camp, its security & alarm system, repressions faced by captured escapees, the collective revolts and finally tells the stories of 25 escapes - including the one of Vrba & Wetzler:
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