The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz (20 page)

I could hear a man being beaten because he was moving too slowly. Anyone too weak to stand, those who had deteriorated overnight or had given up in the darkness, were pushed to one side. I guessed what would happen to them.

Breakfast was odd-tasting black bread smeared with something I took to be rancid margarine. We passed between tables picking it up as we went by. There was no going back. I kept my head down, took it and passed on. I was hungry but I still couldn’t eat it.

I thought of the cartwheels of white bread we had in the British camp, the eggs we could acquire by trade or barter. Even in our camp I dreamt constantly of food but there was no comparison to
life here, none at all. On their diet death was certain, the only question was when.

I was already thinking ahead, preparing for my next ordeal – how I was going to get out of here. We shuffled out to the
Appelplatz
where we were counted and recounted again. When that was over, we were marched down towards the gates under the eyes of the SS. Again I pulled myself upright. They were looking to drag anyone too weak to work from the line. Once outside the gates we turned right onto the track towards the road that ran towards the IG Farben complex. I felt the first wave of relief. I still had to complete the swap but even with a groaning stomach, the long day ahead was welcome for once. I was out of that terrible place and looking forward to hearing English voices again, to getting my uniform back.

We marched into the construction site and after a while I spotted my British comrades. I hoped that somewhere amongst them was Hans. Moving around the site was more difficult for me in his rags; in my uniform he now had the protected status of a POW. As soon as the column fell out there was a brief lull before the instructions for the day were given and I took advantage of it to get across to the
Bude
and hide myself inside as I had arranged. I had told Hans he had to watch out for me. He saw me set off and followed quickly. Had one of the columns been delayed by a lengthy count we could have been in difficulty. As it was the exchange could take place before the work began. I could only plan so far, with the rest I had to play it by ear. I was good at that but it still required a lot of luck.

He was agitated when he appeared in my uniform but if he minded swapping back, he never said. He didn’t want to talk. He was a decent chap and I had always known he would do the job. Still, I was relieved to see him. I knew that if he had panicked on the outside and refused to come back, that would have been it for both of us. When he emerged from the
Bude
it would be as a concentration camp inmate and he knew it. He wanted to get on
with it. I had retrieved my boots from where I’d hidden them before he arrived and his clogs were ready.

I got his striped rags off and was relieved to slide my tunic and trousers on again. I was rejoining my tribe, taking back my protected POW status just as he was losing it. The symbolism was lost in the rush. I wanted to do it quickly.

I repeated the warnings I had given him before we had swapped: stay calm and don’t run. I hardly needed to tell him how to behave like a
Häftling.
I wasn’t sure he was taking it in. He was gone as soon as he was ready.

It was days before I was able to reflect on those hours in Auschwitz III and appreciate the utter desperation of the place. It was the worst thing you could do to a man, I realised. Take everything away from him – his possessions, his pride, his self-esteem – and then kill him. Kill him slowly. Man’s inhumanity to man doesn’t begin to describe it. It was far worse than the horror I faced in the desert war. Then I had an enemy before me and I did my duty. I was good at it and so I survived.

The swap had called for a lot of luck but I was disappointed with what I had learnt from one trip. There were many questions I still couldn’t answer but I had seen it and that was a start. The feeling of the place preyed on my mind.

I rejoined the British prisoners and the daily grind began. There was a pile of flanged pipes to be loaded, and more of those screw-top valves. They weighed about sixty pounds apiece. Getting them on the trolley was the hard part but once the wheels were rolling it was bearable. Once I had got them across the site we stacked them ready for installation and so it went on. It was midday before I could eat anything and by then my appetite had returned.

It was a while before I could talk to Bill. I knew he would have done the business with Hans; I was sure of it. Jimmy had been less involved as it turned out, but they had managed. Bill had got him in rapidly and hidden him away in my bunk well out of sight in the back corner of the hut. They had both been sworn to
secrecy. We never really trusted anybody so the fewer that knew the better.

Avey was ill, that was all they told the others. I had taken to my bunk and wanted to be left alone. Bill took Hans food and drink and he had kept his head down throughout the evening. None of us knew all the British prisoners in the camp by sight, there were too many of us, but the huts themselves were relatively small so they had to keep him out of view until the count. Fortunately people didn’t take much notice of each other and it passed off without incident.

For Hans the subterfuge and risk had been worth it for the cigarettes that he could trade to his advantage. The extra rations available in the British camp should have given him a boost, some more calories. It wasn’t until I talked to him sometime later that he told me the food had made him ill. After months of stinking cabbage soup, the extras had actually upset him. It couldn’t have been anticipated but I was shocked to hear of it. It took the shine off the achievement somehow. He had been comfortable enough resting on my straw mattress under the blankets made from those strange wood fibres. It was better than he was used to and for one night he had been away from the people who wanted him dead.

As for the
Kapo
, I had to get the second lot of cigarettes to him now I was safe. It was some time later that I managed to pay him off. I engineered to walk past him and muttered out of the side of my mouth that I would be in a small building nearby in a few minutes. He turned up and I handed the remaining cigarettes over. He hid them away in his striped shirt and was gone. It was as if I had ripped a twenty-pound note in half and kept part of it back. He had to stick to the bargain.

The whole escapade was foolhardy. Looking back now from the comforts we enjoy today it appears ludicrous, you wouldn’t think it was possible but it’s what happened.

It was about this time that a new and somewhat ironic danger
appeared. By mid-1944 the Allies had realised that the IG Farben Buna-Werke was now within range of the US Air Force Flying Fortresses and worth bombing. Jewish prisoners welcomed the raids despite the danger. They knew that the airmen far above were their friends and they were bringing freedom, but they were still terrified.

The warning on site was given by a large red and yellow painted basket suspended from one of the tall chimneys above the Queen Mary. It was supposed to rise as the bombers approached; the higher it was the closer they were. When it reached the top the planes were virtually overhead.

If we were at work when the bombers came we took cover where we could. We dived into slit trenches or crouched behind walls, while some hid in pipes. I once managed to get down an inspection hatch and into a massive culvert that which ran into the river and I found myself alongside about forty civilian workers and guards. I was allowed to stay. Around the site there were small concrete shelters for the individual guards so they could man their posts during an attack. They were both conical and comical, each one a sort of walk-in German helmet.

There was a giant concrete air-raid bunker on the site. It was taller than many of the buildings, grey, square and ugly. The Germans called anything that shape
klotzig.
It fitted. It could probably withstand a direct hit. I’m told it’s still there.

The Jews had to make do with lying on their bellies in the earth and seeking what protection they could find from the terrain. Some gathered round us, thinking that as allied prisoners we enjoyed some special protection or knowledge of where the bombs would fall. We didn’t.

20 August 1944 was a pleasant summer’s day by Auschwitz standards. It was one of those rare Sundays when we weren’t required to work and some of the lads had arranged what they called a gala. It was a desperate attempt to boost morale but it
wasn’t up to much. There were a few improvised sideshows – with tin cans to knock over and that kind of thing.

I heard the air-raid warning and the mood changed. We left the huts quickly and went down into the field at the rear of the enclosure where the land dropped away. There was a drainage ditch that ran east to west and a small bomb shelter in the easterly corner. It was nothing like the huge bunker on the factory site but it was pretty solid. I didn’t want to go inside. The rumours of the gassings – correct or not – were always in the front of my mind. The heavy steel doors had a large metal catch on the outside and that stoked my suspicions. It was dark and portentous. I took my chances outside in the ditch. I was not alone. Many of the lads heading into the shelter got as far as the walled ramp that ran down to the doors and stopped. They thought they were safe without going inside.

Smoke was already drifting across the camp, released from canisters to the south of the site. It was designed to fog the entire area and entice the planes away from the buna plant, making precision bombing impossible. At the altitude the Americans bombed from, accuracy was unlikely anyway.

I heard the fearful drone of bombers high above. They seemed to be coming from the south. I rolled into the ditch and heard the whistle of falling bombs. It was little comfort knowing that they were friendly. The ditch was waterlogged and my feet were soon soaked. I pressed my face into the earth banking and covered my head. There was a terrific explosion, about forty yards away. I felt the blast waves on the side of my face. It had come from near the bomb shelter. More blasts followed further away towards the factory site. It was about fifteen minutes before the raid stopped and I could check the damage.

I ran to the shelter to find a pile of concrete about fifteen feet deep where the entrance ramp had been. There were bodies and body parts scattered over a wide area. The spot where the lads had stood had taken a direct hit. Those inside the shelter
had survived, they emerged through a separate entrance. There were a few wounded lads around, but most of those outside the shelter door were dead and their bodies were trapped in the rubble.

‘Is there a miner here?’ someone was shouting. One of the lads had started to pull away the masonry but he was making little impact. He was in shock and far too timid for the task. I called him to come out and took his place and began digging without pause. Every stone was moved carefully to prevent the larger concrete slabs from slipping and crushing any potential survivors below.

I shouted for ropes and they arrived after a delay. I tied one end around one large slab of concrete after another and the lads at the rim of the crater heaved them up so I could check underneath. As we dug down we uncovered one smashed body after another, some with limbs missing, others blown apart or crushed in the masonry.

There was one large piece of concrete impeding the dig. It had to be moved. If anyone was still breathing down there we needed to get to him quickly. I could rock it but it could only move in one direction. That meant rolling it across the head of a dead soldier trapped in the rubble. I knew it had to be done for the sake of any survivors below but that didn’t stop one of the lads taking me to task. ‘The poor feller’s dead,’ I argued. ‘What would you do?’ He backed down as he knew there was no alternative. I took a deep breath and began to push. Eventually I got that body out and the remains were passed up to those outside the crater. I returned to digging.

We dug on down and back towards the shelter doorway but our hopes of finding any more survivors were slipping away. Then there was a muffled noise and I realised someone was alive in there. I pulled away more stones creating a hole large enough to crawl into. When I got to him, he was semi-conscious. I asked him which part of his body was trapped. He couldn’t
answer. I called for some water and went back in with a tiny bowl to splash his face. Now he was conscious, angry and swearing. He gave me a dog’s life but we eventually got him out. His life had been saved by a three-legged wooden stool that had deflected some of the fallen masonry and created a protective pocket around him.

Above ground, the lads had been at work dealing with the injured. There were now more than thirty sets of remains laid out. We reassembled them as best we would and they were sewn into blankets straight away. It was a grisly task. They were our friends.

Innocent people were dying around us all the time but it’s different when they are your comrades. It was a massive blow to morale but we had to get on with it. There were claims later – which were believed by the Red Cross – that the lads had been killed because they had been watching the ‘show’. It wasn’t like that. They thought they were safe.

The bodies were to be buried in a cemetery belonging to the Church of the Ascension of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Oswiecim. I was sent on ahead with Bill Meredith – a lad from Liverpool – to help dig a mass grave to one side against the wall. There was a small chapel at the end of a walkway and it was the first time I had seen gravestones with photographs on them. They intrigued me.

We stripped to the waist and began digging. When it was finished a lorry arrived with the remains on the back. There were a few lads around but there was no ceremony or service that I remember. They passed the bodies down and Bill and I laid them in the earth side by side. It was like in the desert. For the first time in too long I thought about the men I’d left in the sand and about Les who I had left unburied.

There was no time to pay respects. We were sent back on the lorry leaving the bodies uncovered. I don’t know who closed the grave. Three weeks later a bomb fell on the cemetery and their
resting place was destroyed. After the war the bodies that could be identified and some that couldn’t were moved to an official war cemetery in Krakow where they have been left in peace ever since.