Their second night is much more grueling than the first. They have to stop frequently to rest; they’re worn out. The adrenaline rush brought on by their escape, which gave them strength the previous day, has tailed off. But even so, they continue on their way until the sky begins to lighten and they can’t go any farther. Their road has offered them many crossings and junctions, and they’ve made their choices intuitively, but they really don’t know where they are.
They’ve left the dense forest behind and reached a much less overgrown area, with scatterings of trees, cultivated fields, and scrubland. They know it’s a populated area, but they’re too tired to fuss. It’s still very dark, but on one side of the road, they make out a clearing surrounded by shrubs. They head toward it, feel around for some leafy branches to pick up, and build an improvised shelter so they can sleep for a few hours. If the shelter is inconspicuous, they might even be able to spend the whole day in it. They climb into their hideout and close off the entrance with a couple of bushy branches. Daybreaks in Poland are very cold, so they huddle together to keep warm, and finally manage to fall into a sleep of sorts.
They sleep so deeply that when the sound of voices wakes them up, the sun is high in the sky, and they feel a stab of panic in their stomachs. Their refuge is nowhere near as dense as they had thought; the branches they used to close off the entrance leave obvious gaps, and they’re astonished at what they see through these holes. They haven’t stopped to rest in the clearing of a wood, as they believed. In the dark of night, without realizing it, they had reached the edge of a town, and what they had actually done was go to sleep in a public park. What they see, a few meters from what they thought was an unobtrusive clearing, are benches and swings.
The two exchange a petrified look, not daring to move a muscle, because they can hear footsteps approaching. When they were preparing their escape, they devised ways to avoid SS patrols, checkpoints, and dogs, but it is children who have become their worst nightmare.
Before fear has had time to overcome them, two children, a boy and a girl with blond hair and blue eyes, have already planted themselves in front of the entrance to their shelter and are staring at them with Aryan curiosity. They see a pair of black boots approaching a few steps behind the children, who turn around and run off, shouting in German,
“Papa, Papa, come! There are some strange men!”
The cap of an SS sergeant appears, and the Nazi stands there looking at them. Rudi and Fred are paralyzed, huddled together, completely vulnerable. The Oberscharführer’s head looks disproportionally large as it leans in among the branches, like the head of an ogre. The skull on the cap’s peak looks at them as if it recognizes them. In that moment, the two fugitives see their entire lives flash before their eyes. They want to say something, but fear has taken away their voices and frozen any movement. The Nazi sergeant studies them, and a malicious smile appears on his face. They see his wife’s high heels approaching and don’t quite catch what her husband whispers to her.
All they hear is the scandalized German woman’s loud reply:
“You can’t bring children to a public park anymore without finding two men embracing each other among the plants! It’s a disgrace!”
The woman storms off indignantly, and the sergeant, the little smile still on his face, collects his children and walks off after her.
Rudi and Fred look at each other lying on the weeds. They hadn’t noticed that they were still hugging each other, as they were when they fell asleep. And so now they hug each other even more firmly and are eternally grateful that fear left them speechless. Anything they might have said, even a single word, would have betrayed them as foreigners. Silence is usually golden.
Rudi Rosenberg and Fred Wetzler believe they are not far from the Slovak border, though they don’t know exactly the right road to the Beskidy mountain range. But that’s their second problem. Their first is that they are not invisible. On a sharp corner of a lane, they almost run headfirst into a woman. They are in a populated area with open fields: It’s inevitable that they’ll come across people like this Polish peasant with a heavily wrinkled face, who is looking at them apprehensively.
The two men decide they have no other option but to risk everything—they were going to bump into someone sooner or later. And anyway, they need help. They’ve been without food for more than twenty-four hours, they haven’t slept for days, and they don’t even know if they’re on the right track to Slovakia. They exchange a quick glance and instantly agree to tell the truth to this woman. In uncertain Polish, mixed with Czech phrases, much hand waving, and even interruptions to what the other is saying in an attempt to produce a convincing explanation, they tell the old woman that they are fugitives from Auschwitz. They are peaceful and just need to know how to get to the border so they can go back home.
The suspicious expression on the peasant woman’s face hasn’t altered: She even steps back when they try to come closer. Fred and Rudi fall silent. She peers at them with tiny eyes like peppercorns. They are tired, hungry, disoriented—and frightened. They beg her for help with gestures, and she looks down. The two men exchange glances, and Fred motions with his head that they have to leave before the woman starts to shout for help and gives them away. But they are afraid that she’ll sound the alarm the minute they turn around and stop eye contact with her.
They don’t have time to launch into their retreat. The woman looks up, takes a step toward them as if she has reached a sudden decision, and grabs Rudi by the sleeve of his sweater. They realize that she wants to look at them more closely. She examines them in detail, just as she would a horse or a calf. She wants to see what sort of men they are: Their unshaven faces and dirty clothes aren’t enough to convince her that they’ve told her the truth, but she also notices their haggard eyes, swollen from lack of sleep and sunken into their thin, almost cadaverous faces. She notices how their bones protrude everywhere and almost poke out through their skin. And then finally, she gives a nod. She gestures for them to stay where they are and indicates with another hand motion that she’ll bring them something to eat; they even think they understand a bit of what she says to them in Polish—“person” and “border.” After taking a few steps, the woman turns around and insists that they wait, that they stay right where they are.
Rudi whispers that she might go and report them to the German authorities, and that it might be an SS patrol that appears. Fred points out that they can go and hide but, if she raises the alarm that two fugitives from Auschwitz are here, the Germans will cordon off the area and search it. It would be very difficult for them to escape.
They decide to wait. They go over to the other side of the wooden bridge across the little stream from which they had taken a drink that very morning, so that if the SS do come, they’ll see them early enough to be able to head into the forest and gain a minute’s advantage. An hour goes by, and the old peasant woman hasn’t reappeared. Their stomachs begin to demand something more than air.