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 SS man, gloved, his uniform creased in all the right places, gave her his most benign and trustworthy smile and said: “My dear lady, we are civilised people. Which gangster said this to you? If you would be so kind as to point him out.” She did as she was asked, and the officer took out his notebook and quietly wrote down the number of the prisoner, visible on the man’s tunic.
Walter understood it well because he was standing every day and every night on the threshold of the abattoir. The sight of it nearly broke him. In those 10 months, there were some fellow prisoners who feared Walter was about to crack. But just at the point when he might have come apart, he was filled instead with a hot and unstoppable urge: he had to act. Somebody had to escape and sound the alarm, issuing the warning that Auschwitz meant death.
Walter stared at the phosphorescent hands of his watch. Time was crawling. He wanted to stand up, to stretch, but he could do no such thing. It was too risky to talk. At one point, Walter felt Fred, who at 25 was six years older than him – both of them from the same small Slovak town of Trnava – take his hand and squeeze it.
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: