21

Escape

ONE MISERABLE DAY AFTER ANOTHER passed in the prison. Our routine was excruciatingly simple. We sat around, talking and speculating. Three times a day, we lined up to receive a bowl of watery soup and a piece of bread, which we ate sitting on the ground. Twice a day, the Jewish supervisors, or kapos (also called ordners), took us upstairs into the prison courtyard and walked us around in a circle. Two kapos would walk in front and two in the back of the group, in an apparent attempt to prevent escapes or sabotage.

The kapos were universally despised. It mattered not at all that they were Jews. They were Jews in privileged situations. Some were only half Jewish, others had Christian wives. They functioned as trustees, able to come and go from their homes. The Gestapo used them to watch the prisoners and to try to get information. They kept watch for escape attempts and revolts. The kapos played the tough guys, and everyone hated them.

The conditions were depressing. We spent the majority of our time lying on the cold tiled floor. Our prison was originally designed to be a morgue, and corpses did not care if their habitat was cold, dark, and wet. We, on the other hand, felt like we were living in a hole in the ground. The monotony was demoralizing in the extreme, broken only by the interrogation sessions and our daily “exercise.” Not seeing the sun rise or set, not being allowed much in the way of personal possessions, slowly starving on our bread and soup diet, all this was enough to drive one insane. Life had not been easy as a U-boat, but at least I had my freedom. Here, we did not live, we existed.

Like the other prisoners, I worried about what fate had in store for me. Would I die under torture the next time I was interrogated? Would the prison be hit by Allied bombs, killing us all? There were rumors that the Gestapo would kill all the prisoners before the Russians captured Berlin, to prevent us from acting as witnesses and in obedience to Hitler’s orders.

The prison was divided into two sections. Those who were deemed unable to supply information useful to the Gestapo were kept in areas above ground. Those who were security risks, or those judged likely to try to escape, were kept locked up in the morgue. It was now called “the bunker” by prisoners and guards. I was kept downstairs.

The number of prisoners varied. Downstairs, the usual count was from between ten and twenty. The upstairs area generally held many more. The makeup of the population changed when some were shipped out to the concentration camps and newly captured Jews would take their places. These transports became fewer and fewer as the number of Jews in Berlin decreased.

It was the certainty that I would not survive long as a prisoner that drove my obsession with escape. This was the favorite topic of conversation between myself and my two friends. We constantly discussed ideas on how this could be accomplished. The fact that we were locked up in an underground basement limited our options severely. There were no windows or doors to the outside. And there was a locked steel gate guarding the only way in or out of the prison.

Still, we tried to be creative. We considered digging tunnels, or attempting to get to the roof and climb down with ropes, or overpowering the guards during our walks. We discussed all types of possibilities, but none of them seemed feasible for one reason or another.

One day, around noon, as we were sitting around in our underground cells, the air raid sirens began to wail. We were lucky in one respect. Since we were well below the surface, we were protected from the threat of explosives, fire bombs and shrapnel fragments. The prisoners aboveground had to remain in their cells during the raids, which meant that, should a bomb hit the building, their chances of survival were slim. They would be blown apart or set on fire by the phosphorus.

I had seen people turned into screaming human torches after being doused by the phosphorus canisters the Allies dropped. The guards would not risk their own safety to move prisoners. Whether they lived or died was a matter of no importance to them.

This is not to say we weren’t worried. Though we might not be harmed by the bombs themselves, if one hit the building and it collapsed, we could all be buried alive. We sat there quietly, listening to the all too familiar sounds of a raid in progress. Suddenly, a tremendous explosion shook the building, almost deafening us. Some thought the end had come and waited for the walls to begin falling.

To our relief, the walls remained where they were. Other than a cloud of dust, there was nothing to make us think that the building had been hit. For several minutes, there was almost complete silence. Then we began to hear voices outside, some shouting commands, some wailing in terror. In the distance, we could hear the sirens of fire and rescue units heading in our direction.

Two guards came into the basement, looking to see if anything had been damaged or destroyed. It was unusual to see them enter the cells. Normally they kept their distance from us. They told us that a bomb had fallen into the courtyard next to the building, causing substantial wreckage and leaving a huge crater in the courtyard. Finishing their inspection, they departed in an expeditious manner.

They were gone only a few minutes when they reappeared and told us that all prisoners would be required to help clean up the debris and repair the damage to the building, starting immediately. They led us outside to the courtyard, where we found a tremendous crater at the point of impact. Parts of the building had fallen into the courtyard, littering it with glass, bricks, stones, and wood. Giant dust clouds hung in the air, and in some places the fences and walls that surrounded the property had been demolished. For the first time, we could see the street.

A contingent of heavily armed German Wehrmacht troops were on the premises, organizing the cleanup. Their first priority was rebuilding the surrounding fences so as to prevent outsiders from coming in, or prisoners getting out. They made announcements as to how the debris would be removed.

I listened but continued to look around at the sight before me. Seeing how huge the crater was convinced me that it was a miracle that there hadn’t been even greater damage to the building. Then I noticed something far more interesting. Running between the prison and the main building of the Jewish Hospital was a tunnel, which the blast had exposed. This must have originally been used to move dead bodies from the hospital to the morgue, which had now been converted into our prison.

I shivered as I pondered the implications of this. This could well provide the means of our escape! My daydreaming ended abruptly as a spade was shoved roughly into my hands. One of the soldiers had noticed me loafing. “Start working!” he shouted, “Fill the wheelbarrows with the debris!”

I nodded my head in acquiescence and ran over to where my friends had already started digging. I said nothing, but the expression on my face must have been enough to alert them that something was going on. To forestall any chance of being overheard, I whispered that I would talk to them later, after the work detail was dismissed. I let my mind wander while my body did the work of clearing rubble, loading wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow. Malnourished as we all were, I was so excited that I hardly felt the strain of working. I had to get a look at that tunnel!

We worked for days, using shovels, picks, and hammers to reduce the big chunks of concrete debris into smaller, more manageable pieces that could be hauled away by trucks.

By the third day, I was close enough to see that the tunnel continued onward beyond the limits of my vision. It was imperative that I find out what was in that tunnel. I knew it was risky, but I put fear behind me and walked down into the tunnel.

After just a few steps, I came upon an iron gate. I half saw and half felt a lock on the gate that blocked me from proceeding any farther. I turned around and walked back to join the others in the courtyard. It was getting late and the guards shouted, “Quitting time!” I was anxious to discuss this new development with my friends. As soon as we were locked up, I got Benjamin and Aron and we retreated into a corner, where I told them about the gate.

“Well, that’s all very interesting,” Benjamin began. “But how does that affect us? “

Aron said, “You say there is a locked iron gate. That doesn’t sound too promising to me.”

“Yes,” I told them, “that is a problem. But on the other hand, if we should manage to get through the gate, we would have a good shot at fleeing into the hospital. The gate might be an advantage, since the guards wouldn’t expect anyone to run in that direction, knowing that they would be trapped.”

Aron’s opinion was that it was a beautiful plan, except for the small problem of the locked gate. Benjamin asked if anyone had an idea on how the gate could be opened.

“It would be difficult,” I said. We suspected that there were informers among the prisoners, so any efforts we made would have to be protected from prying eyes. I told them that, given a few basic materials and tools, I thought I could make a key for the lock.

“A key? You can make a key?” Aron asked, disbelieving, his expressive blue eyes focused intently on me.

“I am reasonably sure I could make a key,” I said.

“But how?” Benjamin interjected. “How in the world could you do it?”

“You haven’t even seen the key that fits into that lock!” Aron whispered hotly. “How can you make a key when you don’t know what it’s supposed to look like? When you’ve only seen the lock in bad light?”

“I may have told you,” I said, “that I served a long and exacting apprenticeship in metalworking, as my father did before me. Part of my training was in the making of locks.

“More important,” I continued, “to complete my apprenticeship, I had to design and make a wing-type lock with two keys.”

“Yes and so?” Benjamin asked.

“So the lock on the tunnel gate is a wing-type lock,” I told them.

There was silence, almost a sense of disbelief that fortune could now smile on us this way. They laughed with excitement. “You know how to make a key for that lock that would allow us to escape?” Benjamin asked excitedly.

“Yes, I hope so. But I need some basic tools to do it. I need one or two files and at least one sawblade. I would also need either a flashlight or candles and some way of working in secret, so that we would not be betrayed.”

“This is amazing. Unbelievable!” Benjamin whispered under his breath. “What are the chances of not only having a bomb fall to expose a gate, but now to have someone with us who knows how to make a key to fit the lock? What are the chances of that? It is unbelievable!”

“It is God himself helping,” Aron swore.

“That may be, but if God really wants to help, He is going to have to get us some tools. I also need something I can use as a key blank.”

“What do you mean, a key blank?”

“A key blank is a piece of metal that the actual key would be fashioned from.”

My heart beat fast. I didn’t know where or how to get any such material. This could all be an unattainable dream, but at least it was a plan.

We heard someone approaching and quickly put an end to our conversation. We couldn’t allow any attention to be drawn to ourselves or the game would be over before it began.

The next day, we started planning how to obtain the tools and materials I needed. Our best bet would be to use one of the kapos to help us. Though they were generally despised, Aron had struck up a mild friendship of sorts with one of them. This kapo, like Aron, had a Christian wife. By chance, Aron had known him and his wife before he had been imprisoned.

There were several hundred of these Jewish-Christian couples in Berlin. At one point, the Gestapo had rounded up a large number of Jewish husbands. In late February and early March 1943, the Christian wives organized themselves and appeared before the Gestapo building on Rosenstrasse. They started a virulent demonstration—screaming, “We want our husbands! We want our husbands!” When the police tried to disperse them, the Christian wives fought back and refused to move.

The SS threatened the women with machine guns if they did not disperse. They held their fire only because the Gestapo didn’t want to further demoralize the population and perhaps provoke a riot by carrying out a massacre in the middle of Berlin. Finally, Goebbels himself ordered most of the men released. Others, for whatever reason, were not released. Aron was one of those unfortunates.

The Gestapo did, however, give one privilege to the wives whose husbands remained in prison: twice a month they allowed them to bring their husbands small packages of food, toothbrushes, combs, soap, and the like. As we discussed how we should go about getting the tools we needed, I remembered that Aron received these packages from his wife.

“Wait! I’ve got it!” I exclaimed, looking over at Aron. “You can ask your wife to include the files and candles in the package she sends you next month!”

“That’s fine, but how is she going to know what to send?” Benjamin interjected.

“Why don’t you send a message to her?” I told Aron.

“Yes, but how?” Benjamin asked.

We kicked the idea around all afternoon. Finally, it was decided that Aron would try to get the kapo to deliver the message. Benjamin thought that we were insane to risk our lives in this way. He felt certain that we would be turned in the moment Aron laid our request before the kapo.

“No,” Aron said softly, still mulling the plan over in his head. “I’ve known him for a long time. The tables could well be turned and he knows it. I could have been the one chosen for kapo and he for prisoner. Besides, he’s told me that he and the other kapos are very afraid of what will happen when the war ends. They know the Germans will eventually lose, and he’s terrified of what will happen to him. The kapos have been doing much of the Gestapo’s dirty work and they fear the Allies’ revenge.”

“As they should,” Benjamin said. “They have much to answer for.”

“Well,” Aron said, “I think I can use this to our advantage. I’ll tell him that if he will pass the message to my wife, I will stand up for him after the war. I think he’ll help us.”

We finalized our plan and, the next morning, Aron approached the kapo. But the kapo refused to do anything and threatened to report Aron to the Gestapo. The next few days were hard, not knowing if we would be hauled off by the Gestapo at any moment. Deportation was the usual penalty for anyone caught trying to bribe a guard. But Aron persisted, talking to the kapo every day. “What is there to lose by continuing to try?” he said. “If we don’t escape, we are most likely doomed anyway.”

The next morning, the kapo pulled Aron aside. He would agree to pass the message if Aron promised to protect him from the Allies. Aron assured him that this would not be a problem and ten days later he received a package from his wife. All such packages were carefully inspected by the Gestapo, so we could only hope that his wife had been clever in how she concealed the items. We waited anxiously as Aron opened the box. He pulled out a pair of men’s shoes, some candy, cigarettes, a comb, and a toothbrush.

Later that night, we got up from our mattresses and went into a corner with the shoes. Aron and Benjamin stood in front of me, shielding me from view.

When the bomb exploded near the prison, it created mountains of debris. During the cleanup, I had picked out a nail, a piece of wire, and a piece of glass. I hid these on my person and smuggled them into the prison. I now took the sharp edge of the glass and cut some of the threads that fastened the soles to the shoes. I pried the soles away, exposing a cavity in each shoe. In one cavity, I found half of a metal cutting saw blade. In the other, there was a miniature file about four inches long.

“Will they work?” Benjamin whispered excitedly.

“They will have to,” I said. “Nothing larger would have fit into the shoes. I’ll try my best.”

I looked over at my friends as they celebrated silently. “There is something else,” I continued. “I am going to need a flashlight or a candle so I can light the tunnel well enough to see the gate lock. There’s not much hope we can get either of those. And I still haven’t found any material to make the key.”

We had been continuing to dig out the collapsed section of the tunnel. Even though the tunnel was ten feet wide, there was only room for two people to work at a time. Two of us shoveled debris into a wheelbarrow. Once it was full, another prisoner would replace it with an empty one. This continued all day. We would take turns shoveling or emptying the trash.

During one of my turns to empty the wheelbarrow, I saw a piece of lead pipe sticking out among the debris. Lead was suitable as a material, because it was relatively soft metal, easy to cut and shape. The pipe could be cut lengthwise, pounded flat with a stone, then filed into a key. I reached down into the wheelbarrow, grabbed the lead pipe, and hid it beneath some bags of cement.

The next day fortune smiled on me again. I found two short pieces of candle among the debris. These obviously had been used by someone working in the tunnel before the bomb blast. I palmed both pieces and stuffed them into my pockets. Now I had everything I needed to attempt the manufacture of the key.

That night I began. The only place I could work in privacy was in the toilet. Aron and Benjamin had the task of standing in front of the toilet, blocking the view while I worked. When some poor soul came to use the facilities, they would say, “Wait a minute, we were here first. You have to go to the end of the line.” They would stall them while I concealed my tools and came out of the stall.

I began by sawing the pipe in half, down the long axis. It was a tedious job, because the tiny saw blade cut very slowly. When my labor was finally complete, I had two curved pieces of lead, each about four-inches long. Next, I needed to flatten the pieces out. The best I could do was to strike the lead with a piece of brick. The impact of the brick striking the lead created too much noise to be done in the toilet, so I used my time in the tunnel to work on it. Acting as if I was breaking pieces of rubble into smaller chunks, I put the pieces on the concrete floor and struck them until they flattened out.

Now I had a fairly flat piece of lead, my raw material. From past experience, I was already familiar with the basic shape of the key. I stole as much time from working as possible to inspect the lock, trying to figure out the rough dimensions for my key.

Taking Aron with me to the gate, I held my piece of now-flat metal up to the keyhole. With a discarded nail, I scratched the metal, marking the rough size the key should be. That little piece of lead pipe was now becoming a key blank.

Every evening for the next few days, Benjamin and Aron would stand guard in front of the toilet while I whittled the lead to the dimensions I had marked. I used the saw to cut away pieces of metal to form a handle and the outline of a key. Matching the key to the lock was a little more difficult, but a few days later, I inserted the key and it slid in perfectly.

Now came the critical part. The key blank would slide into the lock, but I needed to cut the grooves that would allow it to turn. Under normal circumstances, I would have disassembled the lock and cut grooves in the key to match. But that would have been impossible here.

I knew that locks such as this one had several spring-loaded lifting plates inside. The key had to have grooves or notches that would correspond to each of the lock’s lifting plates. When a key was inserted into such a lock, each of the grooves would meet their corresponding plate. Rotating the key caused the grooves to lift the plates, making the bolt to slide into the lock and away from whatever it was holding shut. This would allow the gate or the door to be opened.

Any chance of making the key actually function would require some way to mark the grooves so that they could be filed into the proper shape. After pondering the problem for many hours, I finally came up with something. I would blacken the key with soot.

I took the lit candle, held it up to the blank and let the flame coat the end of it with soot. Then I inserted it into the lock and turned it hard, as if trying to open the lock. When I withdrew the key blank, I could see where the first lifting plate had marked it. I would file a small amount of lead off in this spot and repeat the entire process, removing a tiny amount at each attempt.

Little by little, the lead blank grew to resemble a real key. Blacken the end, insert it into the lock, turn the key, withdraw it, and file where the plates had marked it. I repeated the procedure many times, carefully filing a little more on each attempt. Eventually, the soot would no longer rub off, which would mark the end of that groove.

But most keys had several grooves and this was the case here. Finishing one groove, I would use my marking procedure to start filing out the next one. All of this took a few weeks of running back and forth between the gate and the toilet when the opportunity presented itself. The necessity of keeping all of this secret meant that I could only work when I wasn’t being closely watched.

Primitive key that I fashioned from a piece of lead pipe. This key opened a gate in an underground tunnel between the Jewish Hospital and the pathology building that served as a Gestapo prison.

I realized during this process how fortunate we had been to find a piece of lead, rather than steel. Lead is a much softer metal. Using steel would have taken far longer and may not have been possible.

When I wasn’t working on the key, I hid it, the file, and the sawblade behind a loose brick in the wall. Had I been discovered, the punishment would have been severe. The Gestapo had the power of life and death over all prisoners. I had been told that while the Gestapo interrogated and beat two prisoners, one of them resisted and struck back. The Gestapo shot him dead on the spot. Another prisoner had tried to escape by climbing over the fence that surrounded the courtyard. An army soldier standing watch gave him one warning, then shot him. He fell eight feet down onto the ground, in front of me and the other prisoners.

None of this deterred me; in fact, it made me even more determined to attempt an escape.

It was now early April 1945 and change was in the air. The guards began lugging large boxes of Gestapo documents and files into the prison yard. When the pile they made was sufficiently large, they set it on fire. They burned so many documents that the resulting smoke made it difficult to see.

It was obvious that the Gestapo were desperate that these files not fall into the hands of the Russians. There was talk of plans to murder all the inmates before the Russians arrived, to hide evidence of their barbaric treatment. All this made us extremely determined to escape as soon as possible.

I had been filing for weeks and now had something whose front portion resembled a normal key. It had a rough handle, a squared-off tip and a number of notches of varying shapes and lengths. I had done all I could using the soot-marking method, but still, when I inserted the key, the lock would not open. It began to look as if I would not be able to get the key to work. It should have worked before now, but something was not exactly right.

My friends were becoming despondent and my own spirits were flagging, although I would not allow myself to give up. That evening, I sat for hours, trying to examine every possible reason why the key did not work. Finally, I decided that I needed some type of lubricant. I knew from my training that a lubricant applied at a critical spot made mechanical devices of any kind work better. Sometimes a lubricant made it possible for them to work at all.

The only problem was that none of us had the slightest idea how we could obtain any grease or oil. It seemed that my plan was doomed to fail, until I remembered the candle stubs. Wax could also act to reduce friction between moving parts.

“Let’s melt one candle with the other,” I said. “We’ll let the wax run onto the key.”

They just looked at me blankly, but they went along with it. We went into the toilet and dripped candle wax onto the key.

I wiped the key with a rag and removed all the visible wax. I then rubbed the key again, trying to make sure there was no wax buildup. If there was buildup, the wax might interfere with the mechanism of the lock. A very thin coating of wax remained on the key, but that was what I wanted, an absolute minimal amount.

I then slightly chamfered the squared edges of the key’s grooves with the file, hoping this would make it easier for the grooves to move the plates in the lock. Perhaps this would make up for slight inaccuracies in the key that were preventing the grooves from matching the plates. I thought that perhaps the original squared edges were getting caught and preventing the key from turning in the lock.

Finally, it was time to go try the newly chamfered and waxed key. We were still spending our days cleaning the bombed courtyard. All three of us managed to situate ourselves in the tunnel. Aron and Benjamin were working in the exposed part of the tunnel. I maneuvered myself until I was hidden from view and made my way over to the gate. I took a deep breath, inserted the key and very slowly turned it in the lock. Lo and behold, it turned all the way. The bolt moved, and I pushed the gate open.

Elated, I looked behind me to make sure no one was watching. I closed and relocked the gate. Now wasn’t the time to escape. We needed to formulate a plan that would give us the maximum chance for success. I returned to my post cleaning out the tunnel. After I pushed my wheelbarrow past Aron, I put it down and walked over to him.

“By the way,” I said. “Start getting your things together. The key works.” I chuckled to myself and moved on. After a few seconds, I looked back over my shoulder and saw him standing with his mouth open, staring at me in shock.

That evening, we made our plans. There was a unanimous feeling that we should leave at night, using the darkness as cover for our movements. We needed to get to the outside, into the courtyard, and then into the tunnel.

The hard part would be getting through the courtyard. To get there, we would have to climb the steps that led from the prison to the toilet, then walk down a hall, through a door, then down the rest of the hallway. The hallway, thanks to the bombing, ended abruptly under the stars. What originally had been a locked door to the outside now was simply an open hole.

An armed guard sat in the courtyard twenty-four hours a day to ensure that prisoners did not escape. The guards worked in six-hour shifts. They had their own room, which, before the bombing, had a clear view of the courtyard. When the courtyard was hit, the same bomb also partially destroyed their room. While it was being rebuilt, the guards had to use our toilet facilities.

It was cold outside in the courtyard, and the guards generally had a fire going. They stayed there all the time, with the exception of bathroom breaks. It was this fact that we focused on. We knew we had to get past the guard in order to escape, and we decided that our best chance would be to overpower him on his way to the toilet.

“We could get him when he walks inside,” Aron said. “I’ve noticed that he doesn’t usually take his rifle with him when he goes to the toilet.”

And so we had our plan.

Every minute would count once we had bolted into the courtyard. We knew that the underground tunnel would lead us to the hospital. But beyond that, we knew nothing. We would have to feel our way through the tunnel and into the hospital. Then we had to make it through the hospital without being recaptured.

We bided our time, waiting for darkness to fall. As the hours passed, we kept a close eye on the guard, waiting for him to either start toward the toilet or to drowse off. We had observed him dozing in weeks past.

Nights were difficult in the prison. With nothing to do, time seemed to pass slowly. Many of the prisoners would talk in their sleep. Others, in the throes of nightmares, would scream hysterically. Some prisoners, including myself and my two friends, didn’t seem to sleep much at all.

Finally, close to dawn but while it was still dark, we decided to make our attempt. As quietly as possible, we made our way up the steps. We crept into the hall and then to the outside. About sixty feet in front of us sat the guard, dozing on a chair before a small fire he had built to keep himself warm. He had not attempted to use the toilet that evening, so overpowering him while he used the toilet was out.

We moved carefully along the side of the building, down the temporary wooden steps to the tunnel. It was tempting to break into a run, but we knew this would increase the noise we were making, so we kept our movements as slow and controlled as possible.

We entered the tunnel and approached the gate. I reached into the pocket of the pants I had been wearing for the last year and pulled out the key. I could hear the nervous, rapid breathing of both of my friends, but I ignored it, trying to remain completely focused on the task at hand.

I inserted the key and turned it. Nothing happened. The key wouldn’t turn in the lock.

I tried again. I turned the key in the lock. There seemed to be some type of interference, preventing it from rotating. I carefully worked the key, not forcing it but twisting firmly.

The bolt moved. The lock opened.

Jubilation!

“Wunderbar!” Benjamin whispered.

Removing the key, I clasped one of the bars of the gate and pushed it open.

“Let’s go,” I whispered. After we had all passed through the gate, I turned around and closed it. I put the key in the other side of the lock and turned it. The bolt shot home. If our escape was discovered, this would delay our pursuers for a few more seconds.

The tunnel was pitch black. We all trailed one hand along the tunnel wall to help guide us. We moved slowly, so as to avoid tripping.

We continued hugging the wall, advancing. Ahead, under the dim glow of an electric light, we saw several hospital beds standing along one side of the tunnel. It was too dark to make out whether anyone was in the beds and we didn’t want to stop to look. We just kept going. Within the next few feet, the tunnel came to an end. We found ourselves at the foot of a set of stairs. Mounting them quickly, we passed through a door located at their head and found ourselves in a hall leading to a room in which a number of hospital beds stood. This room was also dimly lit. We located the exit and rushed through it, but in the process we stumbled, crashing into some furniture.

The resulting noise was considerable, and we soon heard screams coming from some of the beds.

“Was ist los?” “What’s going on?” “What are you doing here?” someone yelled.

We didn’t stop to offer any explanations. Our only chance for safety now lay in speed. We rushed through a door, to find more steps leading downward. We had no idea where we were or where we were going, but we raced all the way.

We went down the steps, then down a hall leading to another door. When we opened the door, we found ourselves outside! We were in a courtyard that was lit up with floodlights. Encircling the courtyard was a wire fence, about ten feet high. Without stopping to think about it, we rushed to the fence, climbed to the top and over and then down the other side. Considering our physical condition, weak from months of malnutrition and mistreatment, this was an amazing feat. It would not have been possible had we not all been supercharged with adrenaline and made desperate by fear. Failure meant death and none of us wanted to die. We did not even feel the cuts inflicted by the barbed wire at the top of the fence until some time later.

We were now on the street—Schulstrasse. Initially, we all ran in the same direction, toward some apartment houses. We stopped at the first apartment house we came to and went inside a wooden gate, into the driveway. We closed the gate behind us and discussed our situation.

“What should we do?” Benjamin asked excitedly.

“We must split up,” I said. “It makes no sense for all of us to go in the same direction. That way, even if they find one of us, perhaps the other two can still escape.”

Aron asked me where I was going, but I refused to tell him. The knowledge would have been of no use to him but could have been extremely harmful to me. For the same reason, I didn’t want to know Benjamin’s or Aron’s destination. We took a moment to wish each other good luck, and then we split up, each of us running in his chosen direction. There was no time for lengthy good-byes.

As soon as the others departed, I heard sirens begin to wail. The guards at the prison must have discovered that we were missing. Each of us wore our own civilian clothing, so we wouldn’t be easy to spot. In prison, we always slept in our clothes and shoes. Otherwise, there was a good chance that they would be missing when we woke up.

Although I wanted desperately to get out of the area, I was too exhausted to run. I had decided to go to the Lebrechts’ apartment. It was a very long walk, but I had to get there.

The date was April 15, 1945, and Berlin was in total chaos. As I walked along, I was amazed at the change in the city’s appearance. I had been imprisoned for approximately four months, and in that time there had been more bombing and destruction rained upon Berlin than I had seen in the previous three years combined. As I walked, almost every building I saw had been completely or partially destroyed.

I saw lampposts where uniformed Wehrmacht soldiers were hanging from ropes around their necks, their feet dangling in the wind and signs around their necks with various inscriptions. One said, “I could not wait.” Another said, “I am a traitor.” The SS doubtless meant this to be a deterrence to any soldier thinking about abandoning his post.

After about a half hour, I felt confident that the Gestapo were not going to find me. They had other worries just then. The streets were one big mass of confusion, and I was now far away from the prison. I was much more worried about the SS stopping me, thinking I was an army deserter. I saw SS in military vehicles cruising the streets. I knew there was a real possibility that they would stop me, and I had no papers of any sort. I just kept walking. When I saw an SS vehicle approach, I would avoid them by ducking into a house or the ruins of a building.

Everywhere I looked, there was turmoil and chaos. I could hear the artillery from the distance—the Russians. Russian planes marked with red stars flew overhead, dropping bombs.

I walked and walked and walked. I was completely exhausted and my feet burned with pain. More than once, I wondered whether I would make it to the Lebrechts. I wanted nothing more than to collapse where I was. Only willpower and desperation allowed me to continue. This was my only chance to survive. If I stopped now, it was all over. After an entire day of walking, I finally neared the Lebrechts. Out of breath and nearly out of my mind, I arrived at 3 Lorenzstrasse—the Lebrecht residence.

The Lebrechts lived in the basement of the Nazi district headquarters building. I approached the building, standing at a distance to see what was going on. But I saw nothing to prevent me from going inside. I climbed the outside steps, trying not to weave as I walked. I went inside the building and downstairs to their apartment.

Terribly dizzy and barely able to stand, I managed to knock on the door.

Please let them be here! I prayed. If they had been arrested, or if they were too fearful to answer the door, I was finished. I didn’t have the strength to look for another hiding place.

I put my hand against the wall to hold myself up. The door opened and I fell, instantly unconscious, into the arms of Jenny Lebrecht.