One of those mornings, when the Kapo supervising the Russians disappeared for a few hours to make out with the woman in charge of the group of female prisoners clearing the adjacent land, the four Russian prisoners managed to build a small hideout. They placed four thick planks edgewise to form the walls, with another board on top to form a roof. Then they piled more wooden planks all around, leaving the little hideout buried underneath. Their plan was to wait until the Kapo was distracted and then pull aside the board that served as the roof and climb inside the hideout. When it was time for roll call, their absence would be noticed. Assuming they had escaped, the Germans would start to look for them in the forest and surrounding area, because they wouldn’t suspect that they were, in fact, hiding outside the electrified perimeter of the camp complex, just a few meters from their own camp fence.
The Germans were methodical. Any escape activated a state of alert that instantly mobilized SS soldiers into search parties and heightened security at the checkpoints in nearby towns for precisely three days. At the end of this time, these special measures came to an end and the SS returned to their normal guard duties. So the Russians would have had to wait inside their hideout for exactly three days and then take advantage of the fourth night to reach the edge of the forest and begin their flight without the added pressure of the special search and capture forces.
The idea of escaping has taken hold of the registrar himself, to the point where it has become an obsession. Some of the camp veterans talk about escape fever as an illness that attacks people in the same way as a contagious disease. There comes a moment when the victim suddenly starts to feel the urgent and unstoppable need to escape. At first, you think about it now and again, then more and more often, and in the end, you’re incapable of concentrating on anything else. You spend all day and night planning how to do it.
*
It has been only a few days since the Russians left their hideout and tried to escape, and Rosenberg watches with a heavy heart as a group of SS soldiers escorts the chained fugitives into the camp with the Kommandant, Major Schwarzhuber, bringing up the rear. The prisoners have difficulty walking, with their clothes in shreds and their eyes so swollen there’s scarcely a slit to look through. The camp guards use whistles to order all the prisoners out of their huts. Together with those who are already out and about, they are forced to watch the spectacle. The Germans beat anyone who tries to avoid it. They want everyone to see, because punishment and executions are pure teaching tools for the Nazis. There is no better and more practical way of demonstrating to the inmates why they shouldn’t escape than to show them live and direct what happens to those who attempt to do so.
The Kommandant orders the patrol to stop in front of a barrack that has a pulley near the roof. People might assume it’s there to hoist bales of straw or sacks of grain, but it’s actually used to hang people. Schwarzhuber, enjoying the moment, gives a long, unhurried speech in which he praises the efficient way in which the Reich deals with those who disobey orders, and gleefully announces the merciless punishment that awaits them.
Before executing the fugitives, as if by way of a macabre service charge, they are given fifty lashes. Then, one by one, a rope is put around their necks. A lieutenant points to half a dozen men who are watching and tells them to start pulling on the rope. When they hesitate momentarily, he makes as if to draw his gun from its holster, and the six quickly set to work. As they pull on the rope, the body of the first fugitive, kicking and choking, begins to detach from the ground and from life.
Rudi gazes in horror at the man’s contorted face: his eyes—looking like hard-boiled eggs—forcing their way through his swollen eyelids, his enormous tongue, the soundless cries emerging from his twisted mouth, the end of the frantic kicking, the leakage of every conceivable fluid onto the ground. When he turns away, Rudi’s eyes catch sight of the faces of the other fugitives, who are barely upright and lean against each other as they wait their turn to be executed. They already see death as liberation. That’s why they accept the noose around their necks so meekly—to put an end to it all as quickly as possible.
*
Although the scene leaves Rosenberg deeply shaken, it doesn’t lessen his determination to escape from Auschwitz II one way or another. Alice has left him with a blurred, bittersweet memory, and above all, she has proved to him that nothing beautiful can blossom in this hell. Suddenly, the camp is suffocating him, and he finds it unbearable to be in such close proximity to death. He has to try to get away, even if he ends up dangling and kicking with a rope around his neck.
He’s made some initial contacts in camp BIId, where he is in touch with people who know their way around every chink in the Lager. One afternoon, he comes across Franti?ek, the secretary of one of the huts he deals with and a prominent member of the Resistance. Many barrack Kapos have secretaries who act as their assistants and whom they protect. Rudi talks to him about his keen desire leave, and Franti?ek tells him to come by his room the next day for a coffee.
Coffee?
Coffee is a luxury available only to those who have good connections with the black market, because you don’t just need coffee, but also a grinder, a coffee pot, water, and the means of heating it. Rudi keeps the appointment, naturally! He loves coffee, and even more than coffee, he loves being on good terms with well-connected people. He enters the hut—empty at this hour because everyone in this camp is outside working on the extension of Auschwitz—and heads for Franti?ek’s room. He goes inside without knocking, but he’s the one who gets a surprise. His heart skips a beat when he sees that, apart from the secretary, there’s a uniformed member of the SS. The word betrayal hits him instantly.
“Come in, Rudi. It’s all right. You’re among friends.”
He hesitates briefly in the doorway, but Franti?ek is trustworthy, or so he believes. The SS man hurries over to introduce himself, holding out his hand in a friendly manner.
“My name is Viktor, Viktor Pestek.”
Rudi has heard many things in his work as registrar, but he’s never heard anything as astonishing as the proposal the SS guard proceeds to put to him.
“Would you like to escape with me?”
Viktor explains his plan in great detail, and if truth be told, it’s not so harebrained, or at least not the first part: leaving through the main gate dressed in an SS uniform, without raising any suspicion, and catching the train to Prague. By the time the Germans realized the next morning that they were missing, they’d be arriving in Prague. The second part of the plan seems more insane to Rudi: getting papers for themselves and for two women, and then returning to Auschwitz to get the women out.
Rudi listens very carefully, and there’s no question he would be hard put to find a better way of escaping than leaving in the company of an SS officer, but something tells him it wouldn’t work. Perhaps it’s his heartfelt distrust of the SS that causes this instinctive negative reaction. But whatever the reason, he decides to decline politely, assuring the two men of his absolute discretion.