Concentration camps ruthlessly deprived prisoners of the will to resist, humiliating them at every step. Exhausted and stripped of hope, they often preferred to commit suicide rather than try to regain freedom. Especially since the penalties for escaping were absolute. And they threatened not only the escapees themselves.
What were the chances of the refugee in the world outside the concentration camp? Even if he had already defeated the security system, the camp striped uniform, shaved head and tattooed number gave him away right away. Sometimes he could count on the help of the local population, but he was still exposed to danger at every step.
In the case of being caught, the penalty for arbitrary leaving the camp was one:death. Before it happened, however, the fugitive was brutally beaten and ridiculed. Dressing him up in a grotesque jester outfit was a common practice. He was also given a plaque with the mocking inscription:"Hurray, hurray ich bin wieder da!" that is "Hurray, I'm here again!" .
More than once it happened that even after the execution, the bodies butchered with torture were desecrated. As Gracjan Fijałkowski, one of the former prisoners of KL Auschwitz recalled:
Two corpses were sitting on makeshift stools. Their backs were supported with pegs, and the same pegs supported their widely spread hands. They looked as if they were sitting in comfortable armchairs. Crumpled hats decorated with colored paper ribbons were put on their heads, their faces smeared with soot.
Ten for one
What if the prisoner's escape was successful? Then the consequences were borne by his fellow prisoners:comrades from the block or from the labor commando . They were forced to assemble for hours, during which, regardless of the weather, frost or heat, they had to stand still. There was no question of helping those who passed out.
There were still daredevils who tried to break through the fences and get out. Even if the punishment in case of capture was ridicule, torture and death.
The deputy of the camp, Karl Fritzsch, warned the newcomers to KL Auschwitz that he would lose ten others for each runaway. He was not exaggerating. In such cases, a group of inmates was directed to cells in block 11, where they would die of starvation. Once, as the camp archives recall, as many as twelve randomly selected prisoners were hanged for the escape of their colleagues from the measuring commando!
No wonder that the piercing signal of the siren, which announced the alarm in the camp after someone's escape, and the subsequent punitive appeal, were terrifying. The memory of the "selection", when it was decided about the life and death of comrades, remained with many prisoners forever. This is what Artur Krzetuski tells about it:
It was difficult to decide what to do when the selector was in front of me:whether it was better to look him in the eye (but that might be considered audacious!) or you'd better look down. And then, as he passed me, anxiety grew for my brother, who stood more on the right wing as the taller one:he would pass his brother or be looked at.
Those who were planning to escape were afraid of this:the collective responsibility of their campmates for their actions. They also tried in various ways to spare them the consequences. This was the case with the spectacular escape of a group of prisoners from Auschwitz, described by Andrzej Fedorowicz in his book "The famous escapes of Poles". The initiator of the action was supposedly a Ukrainian, Eugeniusz Bendera.
This respected car mechanic learned that his apparently strong position in the camp did not protect him from death. His name was on the list of people for liquidation. He persuaded Kazimierz Piechowski to cooperate, who, as a political prisoner, could not count on indulgence on the part of the Germans.
How to avoid punishment for fellow prisoners?
Thanks to the tasks performed in the camp, two conspirators had access to cars. They also knew where the Germans kept their weapons and spare uniforms. The severity of the escape plan, however. Piechowski and Bendera first of all wondered how to organize it in such a way that no outsiders would be hurt. They did not want to expose their fellow prisoners from the block or from the labor commando.
Kazimierz Piechowski and his companions became the most famous fugitives from Auschwitz.
Impossible? Yet the fugitives had an almost crazy idea. As Fedorowicz reports in "The Famous Escapes of Poles":"You have to create a false labor commando. If the Germans release them and it doesn't come back, no one else will be responsible for it ". As the smallest commando consisted of four people, two more trusted companions were included in the conspiracy:Józef Lempart and Stanisław Jaster.
A group of four conspirators went into action on Saturday, June 20, 1942. They went out the gate as Rollwagenkommando , under the pretext of garbage collection. Passing the famous inscription Arbeit macht frei they felt a substitute for freedom. Then they broke into camp warehouses without any problems. They entered as prisoners in striped uniforms, and left them as SS men armed to the teeth.
Four prisoners escaped ... in a Steyr 220 convertible.
Prepared in this way, they got into a Steyr 220 convertible and then drove towards the station at the exit from the outer camp. They also succeeded there. All thanks to the fact that at the decisive moment Piechowski let a steak of insults towards the soldier, who was reluctant to lift the barrier ...
After the discovery of the escape, the camp was in turmoil. A fake commando left the KL Auschwitz area and no one bothered to check them! After all, a glance at the camp records was enough to find out that such a commando did not exist. Four conspirators ridiculed the camp authorities and turned the eyes of Berlin to them ...
Someone always has to pay
The biggest surprise for the prisoners, however, was that they were spared many hours of punitive "stands". Usually, it was for them that they were waiting for the chase after the fugitives to come to an end. How it's possible? After Piechowski and Bandera had escaped, the inmates probably owed "special considerations" to ... the Nazis did not want to admit their mistakes.
"The Germans preferred to accuse their officers of oversight than to admit that Polish prisoners had outsmarted the security system of the extermination camp, which was presented as perfect," writes Fedorowicz. So this time ... members of the camp crew suffered the sequences of the escape. As we read in "The famous escapes of Poles" :
Soon a special commission appeared in KL Auschwitz, which questioned Commandant Hoess and five SS NCOs. Several of them were sent to the Eastern Front. Kurt Pachala, a warehouse capo, whom the Gestapo accused of helping the escaped, was chosen as the scapegoat from among the German function prisoners. After a brutal investigation, Pachala was imprisoned in the starvation bunker of Block 11, where he died in January 1943.
Even commandant Rudolf Hoess (on the right) was interrogated about the escape from the camp.
Unfortunately, the repression did not end there. It happened that in the event of a successful escape, they affected the families of fugitives. It was like that now. Józef Lempart's mother was sent to Auschwitz where she died soon.
Jaster's parents were also arrested by the Gestapo and then sent to the camp. They both died. Piechowski's parents did not share this fate only because they worked in the Reich as forced laborers. In turn, Gienek's wife avoided harassment thanks to the fact that she became involved with a German.