I Escaped from Auschwitz

The Shocking True Story of the World War II Hero Who Escaped the Nazis and Helped Save Over 200,000 Jews

Rudolf Vrba, Robin Vrba, Nikola Zimring, Robin Vrba, Nikola Zimring

• Publisher: Racehorse
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781631584725
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Jüdische Theologie

The Stunning and Emotional Autobiography of an Auschwitz Survivor April 7, 1944—This date marks the successful escape of two Slovak prisoners from one of the most heavily-guarded and notorious concentration camps of Nazi Germany. The escapees, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, fled over one hundred miles to be the first to give the graphic and detailed descriptions of the atrocities of Auschwitz. Originally published in the early 1960s, I Escaped from Auschwitz is the striking autobiography of none other than Rudolf Vrba himself. Vrba details his life leading up to, during, and after his escape from his 21-month internment in Auschwitz. Vrba and Wetzler manage to evade Nazi authorities looking for them and make contact with the Jewish council in Zilina, Slovakia, informing them about the truth of the "unknown destination" of Jewish deportees all across Europe. This first-hand report alerted Western authorities, such as Pope Pius XII, Winston Churchill, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, to the reality of Nazi annihilation camps—information that until then had only been recognized as nasty rumors. I Escaped from Auschwitz is a close-up look at the horror faced by the Jewish people in Auschwitz and across Europe during World War II. This newly edited translation of Vrba's memoir will leave readers reeling at the terrors faced by those during the Holocaust. Despite the profound emotions brought about by this narrative, readers will also find an astounding story of heroism and courage in the face of seemingly hopeless circumstances.

CHAPTER 1

A Son Like Me

IT WAS FEBRUARY 1942 IN SLOVAKIA IN A SMALL TOWN called Trnava. I sat in the living room, ignoring the Russian grammar that lay open in front of me, for I knew it was no use trying to study anymore. I could hear my mother, stomping around in the kitchen next door, banging the saucepans about, as if she had a personal grudge against them, and that was a sure sign that there was going to be an argument.

There were, I suppose, good grounds for one. An hour earlier, I had told her I was going to England to join the Czechoslovak Army in exile, and viewed through my mother’s eyes from our little town of Trnava, some thirty miles from Bratislava, England seemed as distant as the unexplored jungles of Peru.

Her voice, rancid with sarcasm, rose above the discordant kitchen orchestra and reached me, loud and clear, through the open door. “Why not slip up to the moon and cut yourself a slice of green cheese? But be back in time for supper!”

I said nothing. A delicious smell, a wonderful conglomeration of wiener schnitzel, apple strudel, and frying potatoes distracted me momentarily from the debate which I felt was only beginning anyway.

“I don’t know where we got you. You’re certainly not like any of my side of the family. First this business of learning English. And then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, Russian, if you please!” A snort. A few more sporadic clanks. Muttering which could have been directed at me or could have been meant for the schnitzel. Then: “Russian! Why can’t you settle down like everyone else and learn a decent trade? Where do you get these uppity ideas anyway?”

I closed the Russian grammar, went into the kitchen, and said, “Momma, I’m not going to be deported like a calf in a wagon.”

The saucepans were silent. My mother wiped her hands on her ample, flowing apron; gave me a long, shrewd, penetrating look; sighed; and said, “No. I suppose you’re not. I suppose you’re right.”

Then she sprang to the gas stove and hauled a pot off the flame, as if she were saving a child from the Danube. “Now look what you’ve made me do!” she snapped. “You’ve made me burn the potatoes!”

In our house, that was a grave crime indeed, for Momma was a proud and excellent cook.

ANY JEWISH MOTHER WOULD HAVE WORRIED ABOUT A SON like me; for in the independent Protectorate of Slovakia, pledged by its President Father Tiso, to fight side by side with its Nazi benefactors, Jews were not expected to get above their station. Indeed, they were forbidden to do so by law.

It was not so much the laws which worried Momma. It was more a matter of conscience, a desire to do the right thing; for her mind had been so molded by the acquiescent elders of her synagogue that she had more or less accepted the status of second-class citizen as something reasonable and proper.

When I began learning English, for instance, she clucked about me and worried, as an English parent might worry if the son of the house refused to play cricket and took up baseball. She regarded my studies as an eccentricity.

When I added Russian to my curriculum, however, she became so concerned about my mental stability that she took me to the doctor. Luckily, he was a student of Russian himself and was able to assure her that, while my ambitions might be unusual, they were not medically abnormal.

Looking back on my own attitude at the time, I am surprised that I, too, accepted so much so quietly. I can only conclude that it was because the laws curtailing our rights were introduced discreetly, falling almost imperceptibly around us, like gentle snow.

I became aware of them first at the age of fifteen, when my name was struck off the roll of the local high school. Private tuition was denied to me, too, and I was forbidden to study on my own, a regulation which, of course, was impossible to enforce and which I ignored. Nevertheless, as I could not go to school, I went to work as a laborer.

At work, I found there were two salary scales—a low one for Jews and a higher one for all others—and when I was out of work, I found I had to take second place in the queue at the labor exchange. Jobs went to non-Jews first, and if there were any left over, we were lucky.

Next came restrictions on movement. We were allowed to live only in certain towns and then only in certain areas of those towns, the poorer parts. Travel, too, was curtailed, and we could move only certain distances without permission, and so the ghetto system moved gradually into Slovakia.

All this, of course, I resented; yet I accepted these rulings more or less as some of the unpleasant facts of life. Even when it was decreed that Jews must wear the yellow Star of David on their jackets, I conformed and thought little about it.

It was only when the deportation laws were passed by the government that I suddenly rebelled.

What precisely triggered rebellion inside me I do not really know. Perhaps it was because I was seventeen by that time and at last my eyes were open. Perhaps it was because by state decree I became overnight a Jew, rather than a Slovak. More probably, it was because I resented being kicked out of my own country.

That was the plan. We were told calmly that all Jews were being sent to reservations in Poland where we could learn to work and build up our own communities. Young, able-bodied men would be the first to go, said the announcement, and this, in the circumstances, seemed reasonable enough. It was only later, of course, that we learned the real motive was to remove the core of potential resistance.

I did not know that the reservation was an extermination camp called Auschwitz, a place where I would be expected to die decently and quietly. I simply would not stomach the suggestion that I was no longer a member of the community and that therefore I would have to be cordoned off like a North American Indian. The only difference between us, indeed, was that the Indian was left in his own country.

MY MOTHER WAS A STRONG-MINDED, SELF-RELIANT WOM an who had built up a small dress-making business from more or less nothing. She liked to get her own way, but once she gave in, she accepted the new situation wholeheartedly and approached it with unrelenting logic.

She slammed a sizzling wiener schnitzel down in front of me and said, “How will you get to England?”

“Through Hungary. Then to Yugoslavia. If I find I can get no farther, I’ll join the Titoists.”

For a while, she was quiet. I knew she was thinking of the frontiers I would have to cross, of the black-uniformed Slovak Hlinka Guards, trying hard to ape the SS; of the trigger-happy Hungarian border patrols; of the 1,001 hazards which would face me as I made my way across the tangled boundaries of a Europe at war. Then, having digested these gray thoughts, she said calmly, “You will need clothes, and you will need money.”

The clothes she managed somehow. Money was more difficult. After a few days, however, she came to me and said, “Here you are, son. It’s not much, but it’s the best I can do.”

It was two hundred crowns.¹ My fare to England. In the meantime, I had been studying my route. I decided my best plan would be to travel to Sered on the Slovak side of the border and then to make my way across country to Galanta, about seven or eight miles away in Hungary. There, a school friend of mine had relatives who he said would help me.

The problem was to get from Trnava to Sered, which was miles away, well beyond the limits within which Jews were allowed to travel. Obviously, I could not take a train because there was a constant check on passengers and I would be arrested before I had gone more than a few miles, and walking would be even more dangerous, for I would be passing through strange country and would be a suspect immediately.

It was my mother who thought of the answer. Quite casually, for since she had made up her mind about the situation she had shown little emotion, she said, “You’ll have to take a taxi. Your father knows a man who will drive you without asking too many questions.”

It sounded ridiculous. Who ever heard of anyone taking a taxi ride to freedom? Yet when I thought of it, I realized my mother was right.

It was another week before I was ready to go. The taxi man, a dour, paunchy character with a droopy, tobacco-stained moustache and the doleful face of a bloodhound, was not too happy about the trip, for if he were caught carrying me, he, too, would be arrested. However, in the name of friendship, he agreed to carry me, and I knew I could trust him implicitly.

And so, early in March 1942, I said goodbye to my mother, thanked her for all she had done, and picked up my bag. Her face showed little emotion, and all she said was, “Take care of yourself. And don’t forget to change your socks.”

I did not look back as the taxi drove away, not because I was choked with emotion, but because I was too busy ripping the yellow Star of David from my shoulder.

Then I lay back in the worn leather seats, my stomach twitching with excitement. In my pocket, I had my mother’s two hundred crowns, a map, and a box of matches. It was not much for the journey I was facing, but I was only a boy of seventeen and had yet to learn to calculate risks.

Half an hour later, we saw the lights of Sered, and all that time, the driver and I had exchanged only a few words. The tension was mounting in both of us now, and conversation seemed rather out of place.

It was only when we stopped in the town, indeed, and I got out to pay him that we both became a little more voluble. The fare, he told me, was four hundred crowns.

It was an embarrassing moment for us both. I hauled out my two hundred crowns and offered it to him. He gazed at it sadly for a while, scratched his head, tugged at his moustache, and then said with a monumental sigh, “You’d better keep half. You’re going to need it. Give me a note to your mother, and she can settle up later.”

He was not a Jew, but he was certainly a friend. I tried to thank him, but he was back in the car and driving off quickly before I could get the proper words out. His mission—and for him, it was a dangerous mission—had been completed.

I picked up my bags and looked at Sered. Warm lights and laughter beckoned from the cafés. All around me, people scurried home through a whisk of snow. At the far end of the street, I could see a gendarme idling along toward me. So, I turned my back on the lights and the laughter and kept on walking until I was out in the country again, away from the warmth that was dangerous.

There I studied my compass by match light and headed toward what I hoped was the Hungarian border and Galanta. The snow was falling heavily now, and I was not only cold, but suddenly very lonely. The excitement died in the unfriendly darkness, and something very like fear took its place.

I marched for hours, pushing my rebellious nerves back into place all the way, and at last, I saw lights ahead of me. It was Galanta. I was in Hungary.

My pace quickened, and at five o’clock in the morning, I walked into the deserted town, keeping a close watch for patrolling policemen. I found my friend’s house with little difficulty and, weak with relief and fatigue, knocked on the impressive door.

For a long time, there was silence. I knocked again, more loudly this time, and after what seemed like an hour, I heard distant footsteps.

The door opened a few inches, and the frightened face of a maid peered out at me. Then the door slammed shut.

I knocked again and rang the bell, keeping...