“The sensible thing would be to return to the forest,” mutters Rudi.
Fred agrees, but neither of them makes a move. They can’t; they’ve used up all their energy. They’ve got nothing left to burn.
After two hours, they give up expecting anyone to come and huddle together to get some protection from the cold. They even doze off. The calm is broken by the sound of hurried footsteps. They aren’t going to bother even trying to escape, no matter who it is. They open their eyes and see that the source of the footsteps is a twelve-year-old boy in a sackcloth jacket and a pair of pants held up with string. He is carrying a parcel. They manage to understand that the boy’s grandmother has sent him. When they open the little wooden box he’s carrying, they discover two steaming hot boiled potatoes on top of two thick fried fillets of veal. They wouldn’t exchange them for all the gold in the world.
Before the boy leaves, they try to ask him about the Slovak border. The boy tells them to wait. So, somewhat calmer after the friendly gesture of food and invigorated by the meal, which they devoured with speedy delight, they stay where they are. Night falls almost immediately, and the temperature drops. They decide to go on short circular walks to keep stiffness and some of the cold at bay.
Finally, they hear the sound of feet again, more cautious this time, and hidden in the darkness. They only make out the man in the moonlight when he’s almost on top of them: He’s dressed in peasant clothing, but he’s got a gun in his hand. Weapons are synonymous with bad news. The man stops in front of them and lights a match, which briefly illuminates their three faces. He has a thick, light brown mustache, which looks like a brush for polishing shoes. He lowers his hand with the gun and stretches out the other one for a handshake.
“Resistance.”
That’s all he says, but it’s enough. Rudi and Lederer jump with joy, they start to dance and hug until they fall to the ground. The Pole looks at them, perplexed. He wonders if they’re drunk. And they are drunk—with freedom.
The partisan introduces himself as Stanis, although they suspect it isn’t his real name. He explains to them in Czech that the reason the woman who found them was suspicious was that she thought they might be Gestapo agents in disguise, on the hunt for Poles collaborating with the Resistance. He tells them they’re very close to the border, and they’ll have to be careful about patrols of German soldiers, but he knows their timetable, and they are so precise that they go past the same spot at the exact same time every night, so the two fugitives will have no trouble avoiding them.
Stanis tells them to follow him. They walk silently in the dark along deserted paths for quite some time until they reach an abandoned stone hut with a collapsed straw roof. The wooden door gives way easily with a push. Inside, the vegetation and dampness have overgrown the four-sided stone space. The Pole squats down, lights a match, removes a few pieces of rotten wood, and grabs hold of a metal ring. He pulls on it and reveals a trapdoor. He takes a candle from his pocket and lights it. With help of the light, they go down a staircase into an old storeroom for hay built underneath the hut, but now containing some mattresses, blankets, and provisions. The three of them dine on cans of soup heated over a little gas camping stove. Then, for the first time in ages, Fred and Rudi sleep peacefully.
The Pole is a man of few words but extraordinary efficiency. They leave early the next morning, and he proves to know the forest tracks with the accuracy of a wild boar. After an entire day walking through the forests with barely a stop, they spend the night in a cave. The next day, they don’t even stop. They go up and down the mountains, avoiding the patrols with ease, searching out rocks to hide in until the danger has passed and they can continue on their way. And at dawn the day after, they finally stand on Slovakian soil.
“You’re free,” says the Pole by way of farewell.
“No, we’re not,” answers Rudi. “We still have one duty to fulfill. The world must know what’s happening.”
The Pole nods, and his bushy mustache moves up and down in agreement.
“Thank you, thank you very much—you’ve saved our lives,” Rudi and Fred tell him.
Stanis shrugs; there is nothing to say in reply.
The second part of the two men’s journey will consist of trying to ensure that the world knows what’s really going on inside the Third Reich, what Europe doesn’t know or doesn’t want to know: that it’s a question of something more than a war about borders—it’s the extermination of an entire race.
*
On April 25, 1944, Rudolf Rosenberg and Alfred Wetzler appeared before Dr. Oscar Neumann, the representative of the Slovakian Jews, in the headquarters of the Jewish Council in Zilina. Given his position as registrar in Auschwitz, Rudi was able to dictate a report full of chilling statistics. For the first time, the report described the mechanics of murder on a massive, organized scale, the physical exploitation of slave labor, the appropriation of belongings, the utilization of human hair for the production of cloth, and the extraction of gold and silver teeth and fillings with the objective of melting them down and converting them into coins for the Reich. Rudi calculated the number of Jews liquidated in Auschwitz at 1.76 million.
Rudi also spoke about lines of pregnant women with children clinging to their skirts being led to showers that spewed out poisonous gas; about punishment cells the size of concrete coffins, within which the prisoners couldn’t even sit; about the long workdays spent outdoors by prisoners with snow up to their knees, dressed only in a summer shirt, and with only a bowl of watery soup for the entire day. He talked and talked, and from time to time, tears came to his eyes, but he didn’t stop talking. He was possessed by a feverish desire to shout at a world deafened by the bombs of war that an even dirtier and more terrible war was happening within Europe’s borders behind closed doors. And it had to be stopped, no matter the cost.