19

THE END OF THIS WORLD BEGINS NOW

Clouds rolled overhead as prisoners ran into the Rose Garden. Achtung, a guard shouted, and they took off their smelly hats in one fluid motion. Eight suicides were dragged out of the barracks and their bodies were swung into a wooden cart. The iron springs creaked with each thump. The belts they hanged themselves with were still around their necks, and from the central guard tower happy polka music played out. The sun warmed the air as a sworl of blue appeared on the horizon. It felt warm. Pleasant. The prisoners lined up for their daily ration of bread and lard. Crows cawed from the barbed-wire fence.

Zischer looked around and realized storks would soon be flying back from Africa. Spring was on its way. Life was returning to Poland.

We know from various reports that March 15, 1943, was unseasonably warm, and in the days leading up to the escape attempt the temperature averaged a balmy 15°C (60°F). Huge banks of snow were melting and the Rose Garden became a soupy mixture of water, sand, and gray snow. Boots sank into the sloppy mess and it was very difficult to walk, let alone run. Socks had to be wrung out. All of Lubizec trickled with brown water, and every now and then, huge sheets of snow slid off the barrack roofs—they woomped to the ground. After enduring subzero weather for so long, it must have been almost tropical for the prisoners to experience such heat again. Jackets were unbuttoned and they did away with their scarves. They no longer needed to blow into their hands or worry about frostbite. They stopped dreaming about fireplaces and hot-water bottles. They turned their faces to the sun.

The executions in the Rose Garden seemed like a hundred years ago because so much killing had happened since then. Life (or in this case, death) had moved on. Chaim Zischer and Dov Damiel had to remind themselves it wasn’t that long ago they were forced to lie on the ground and listen to bullets crack into skulls. At night, some of the men in Barrack 14 whispered about what they’d like to do to Birdie. It was a powerful elixir, talking about such things—it filled their muscles with magic and their faces glowed whenever they imagined him kneeling on the wet ground.

“I’ve got you now, Birdie.”

Then they pulled the imaginary trigger. He was resurrected through fantasy and they fired again, and again, because they wanted to keep him endlessly dying.

“It was a pleasant daydream,” Chaim Zischer later said.

More than anything, the prisoners wanted the world to know they weren’t going to their deaths passively, and even if an escape failed, even if they never made it beyond the barbed wire, perhaps they could destroy the engine that pumped carbon monoxide into the gas chambers. An escape attempt, even a poor one, meant the machinery of death might be slowed down for a few days. They didn’t know what lay beyond the trees, and they didn’t know who they could trust outside Lubizec, but it was a worth a try. Anything was better than doing nothing.

It was therefore decided that the newer prisoners shouldn’t know about the plan beforehand because someone might betray them for a roasted chicken or the promise of oranges. The men in Barrack 14 began to speak in code, and they let secrecy be the order of the day. Once the fighting started, maybe others would join in.

They hatched a plan.

They shook on it.

They said, “Good luck.”

It started when Avrom Petranker asked to sharpen three knives. He walked across the soggy ground and went to a toolshed near the gas chambers. Sebastian “SS” Schemise came from the other direction and took out his pistol. He held it playfully, at a sloppy and carefree angle. The bolt was oiled and ready for use.

“What’re you doing here, friend?”

“I need to sharpen these.” Petranker held up the knives and explained that a cow had been bought from a nearby farm. He was ordered to butcher the animal but the knives were too dull.

Schemise curled a long finger as if to say, Let me see them. He ran his thumb along one of the blades and looked doubtful.

“Make it quick.” He dropped the knife point first into the ground. It stood for a moment before it fell sideways into the soupy sand.

“You a kosher butcher? I’d be interested in seeing that dying art.”

Petranker shook his head—“No, sir”—then kneeled down for the knife. He backed away into the shed and let his eyes adjust to the dark. He waited to see if Schemise was following him but, no, he wasn’t. Tools hung on the wall, and around each of them was a white silhouette to mark where they should go. In this way, the guards could tell at a glance if something was missing. Everything around him was covered in grease and sawdust.

Petranker reached for a sharpening stone that was gritty and smelled of oil. He began running it against a blade. A grinding metallic scrape filled up the shed.

It took half an hour to make the knives glisten, but he was pleased to see blood rise up from his thumb when he touched the blade. He reached for some needle-nose pliers and began to sharpen a notch that could be used for snipping wire. He tested it on a coil of barbed wire and smiled when he heard a soft clip. He tried it again. Success! He opened his coat, reached for several screwdrivers, and then stuffed them into his pockets. A hammer was snugged behind his back, gunlike. It fit neatly beneath his belt.

He jogged past a group of naked women on their way to the gas chamber and hid everything behind an enormous sack of hair. He still wasn’t used to the smell and he felt something tart rise up in his throat, like rancid butter. He gagged and covered his nose. He spit on the floor a few times to clear his mouth.

When he ran back outside, the engine was clattertapping at full speed. There were muffled screams for help from inside the gas chamber, and he knew that, soon, he would be dragging those bodies to the Roasts. He would have to grab wrists and ankles. He would have to pull, and tug, and yank.

While Petranker waited outside the chamber with the other prisoners, he glanced at Zischer. They looked at the gritty wet ground that swallowed up their shoes, and they tried not to think about what was happening behind the metal door. There was banging and yelling.

“Mommy, help me!” a child screamed.

They had already seen such terrible things that morning—haunting, lingering things—but it was no different from any other morning in this “Garden of Evil,” as the prisoners were now calling Lubizec. Here, each sin was polished to a high shine. There were tears and screeching and deep-lunged wailing and stunned looks of disbelief. The world became a blur of wickedness and things that once seemed hideous—like when one of the guards, Christian Schwartz, hit a child so hard he broke her arm—became instead commonplace and unremarkable. And now that same child was dying in a gas chamber. In this garden of evil created by man, sin was bitten into hour after hour. A great serpent hissed out poison and still the trains kept on coming.

The shouting slowed behind the metal door as hundreds of hearts stopped beating.

Zischer readied himself for the hard work of pulling gold teeth. He glanced at Petranker and there was a brief nod between them that said, Yes.

It had taken several days but each man had gathered the things he needed, not only for the escape but also for the uncertain future that lay ahead of them. Dov Damiel stuffed a shaving kit, soap, some money, and several diamonds into a pillowcase. David Grinbaum had a razor, a toothbrush, a compass, and some ruby necklaces. Avrom Petranker had a can opener and four watches. Moshe Taube had these things plus a pair of boots.

When the gas chamber door was thrown open, banging and vibrating against the opposite wall, the men dragged out the bruised bodies. Zischer saw the girl with the broken arm and he bowed his head.

Soon, he told himself. Soon.

They waited until dusk because they wanted enough light for the escape, but they also wanted enough darkness to hide in the woods. And so, after many long hours of anxiety—and after 2,057 souls had been snuffed out on the 2:00 p.m. transport—inky night was at last poured onto the land and the electrical lights near the gas chamber flickered on like spirits. The camp was quiet. At rest. Almost peaceful.

It started when Moshe Taube took in a lungful of air and yelled up to the heavens in Hebrew, “THE END OF THIS WORLD BEGINS NOW!”

This set everything into motion. Damiel and Petranker took out the knives hidden in their coats and they charged at the guard closest to them. It was so unexpected and fast that SS Unterscharführer Christian Schwartz didn’t shout for help. He dropped to his knees and was shocked to find that he had been stabbed five times in the belly and once in the shoulder. He looked at the dark blood dripping like molasses on his hands and, when he tried to speak, only a low gurgling came from his lips.

Damiel and Petranker reached for his pistol and dragged him against a wall. They bound him with rope and stuffed an oily, sawdusty rag into his mouth. Instead of shooting him, which would draw too much attention to their position, Petranker spat on the Nazi. He dragged a tarp over the dying man and spat again. He kicked once, twice.

Then the two prisoners set off for the gas chamber. They felt a strange sense of power wash over them as they ran through the sloppy sucking sand.

The gas chamber stank of chlorine and the walls were damp. Petranker flattened himself into the dark while Damiel stepped outside to find another guard. He approached Gustav Wagner, who was busy trying to light a cigarette. He had a face like an anvil and he wore strong aftershave.

“Sir,” Damiel said, snapping off his cap. “The drain in Chamber #4 is plugged. I’m sorry, sir, but could you come and look?”

Wagner shook his head. “Do I look like a plumber?”

“I don’t know how to unblock the drain, sir. The next transport is due tomorrow and I don’t want things to slow down.”

“You Yids. So fucking useless. Okay, show me.”

They stepped into the building and Damiel pointed to the center of the floor. “It’s plugged with something. Hair maybe or—”

Before he could finish his sentence there was a tremendous flash of orange. His ears rang and Wagner crumpled to the floor. The smell of cordite hung in the air and this made the escape real in a way the knifing had not. Petranker pounced on the fallen body, he smashed the man’s opened skull into the floor a few times, and then he patted the dead man’s hips. He held up a pistol.

“Here. Take this.”

Damiel took the gun with both hands and couldn’t believe he was holding such a powerful thing in Lubizec. It seemed dreamlike. The metal was cold and its weight felt like an extension of his fist. All he had to do was point at something he didn’t like and pull the trigger. It was simple. A hammer would snap down and the life in front of him would drop. His face hardened when he thought about this, and the two men stuffed the pistols into their coats. They walked out the door.

Prisoners were busy dragging bodies towards the Roasts and the guards shouted for them to move faster. Damiel and Petranker slipped around the back of the gas chamber and breathed heavily; they knew they’d run into at least one guard because no one was allowed behind the gas chambers—that’s where the engine was. It looked like a swollen sea creature with monstrous tentacles, and it was always guarded by the SS because they worried about acts of sabotage. It was the SS who made sure the spark plugs fired properly, and it was the SS who made sure the gears were well oiled. They checked belts and hoses once a week; they guarded it like a loved one. A shadow paced beside the monstrous engine.

It was Rudolf Oberhauser. “Is that you, Schemise?”

Petranker tiptoed through the deep blue light. The pistol in his hand tugged him forward, forward, forward.

“Schemise?”

The shots drilled the air but the guard didn’t fall to the ground. Instead, he ducked behind the engine and began to shout. “Attack, attack! We’re being attacked!”

Petranker followed him around and fired again.

“Attack! We’re being attacked! Sound the alarm!”

The air sizzled with confusion as other guards began to shout. Damiel found himself holding a pistol with both hands and when Rudolf Oberhauser ran around the engine towards him—he fired. The force of the gun surprised him and his ears rang.

The German who always yelled “Time to die” before the carbon monoxide was pumped into the gas chamber dropped to the ground and began to roll around. He ripped open his jacket, which sent buttons popping into the air, and patted his chest frantically. Blood leaked out of him.

“I’m shot,” he half shouted. “I’ve been … hurt,” he said this in wonderment as if something supernatural had happened.

Dov Damiel was later asked how he felt about this in an interview conducted in 1988. He shrugs. “Should I grieve for this man who yelled into the peephole of a gas chamber? Should I feel sorry for this killer of children? No.”

The interviewer then asks Damiel if he wanted to say “Time to die” as Rudolf Oberhauser bled to death on the sandy ground.

Damiel’s answer is worth noting because he looks at the interviewer for a long time. He squints and shakes his head. “That kind of thing is only done in the movies. I was more interested in escape than in theatrics. Time to die? Why would I waste my breath on such words?”

As Oberhauser went about the business of dying, the searchlights snapped on, but rather than point these shafts of light into the camp, where the gunfire was coming from, something unexpected happened. The guards aimed these huge cones of light into the woods because they assumed the Russians were attacking Lubizec. They thought the front line had somehow shifted and that the Red Army was closing in on them. It never occurred to them that Jews might be rebelling, so the guards opened up their machine guns in a hail of bullets. Hundreds of rounds were fired into the trees. Branches tumbled to the ground. Trunks were peppered with holes. Bark exploded into shreds. The searchlights jerked through the woods and this made phantom shadows seem to run across the forest floor. For the guards (at least in those first few minutes of the escape), the enemy had to come from outside of Lubizec. They just couldn’t imagine the enemy was inside the camp.

Damiel stepped over the body in front of him and began to study the engine. The metal was cold as he searched for a way to start it. Petranker crawled under the iron monster and looked for the oil plug.

“Where is it? Can you see the damn thing?”

They only had a few minutes to destroy the engine before they had to snip the barbed-wire fence and meet up with the others. Time was ticking away as machine guns rattled long threads of light into the woods. Weird shadows were cast onto the ground as Damiel and Petranker searched for the oil plug. It had to be somewhere. Their hands groped the fat belly of the machine, sand got into their hair, and it was hard to see. Once they found the plug—if they found the plug—oil could be drained from the crankcase and then they could start it up. The pistons would ride up and down in unoiled chambers and the whole thing would shriek to an earsplitting stop. The engine would be wrecked, destroyed. Killed.

But first, they needed to find the oil plug.

“Where is it?” Damiel hissed.

While all of this was going on another group of prisoners (Moshe Taube, Chaim Zischer, and David Grinbaum) ran towards the lower end of camp. It was their job to burn Zurich to the ground and if possible shoot Guth. The ground was wet as they half ran, half slid, in front of the squat barracks. Their reflections appeared on the thin windows, and Chaim Zischer ran his fingers along the rough wooden clapboards. Keep going, he told himself.

The world was a blur of motion and he felt alive down to his nerve endings. Searchlights slashed the woods. Guards shouted. The whole world buzzed with noise and light and fear as Zischer opened a low gate that led to the warehouses. He and the others pushed into one of the buildings, and when the door was closed, when it was latched shut, they allowed themselves to catch their breath. They leaned against the wall and looked around.

Machine guns sounded like hammers knocking against a metal wall. They pounded and pounded the air.

“So this is war,” Zischer whispered to himself.

Something shifted inside his bowels and he had to tighten his asshole to keep from soiling himself. “Easy,” he told himself.

It is important for us to remember that none of these prisoners expected to live. They simply wanted to disrupt Lubizec for a few days and slow down the killing process. Yes, an escape had been planned, and yes, they wanted it to succeed, but they had no idea where they would go after they cut the barbed-wire fencing. They couldn’t go home. They couldn’t stay in the woods. Farmers would turn them in. And even if they reached major cities like Warsaw or Kraków, what then? Jews were being rounded up by the millions. The prisoners certainly hoped to live, but their primary goal was to slow down the genocidal gears of the camp. If the guards had to hunt them down in the woods, it meant they couldn’t be running the gas chambers or sending gold back to Berlin. It’s important for us to remember that the escape wasn’t about escape: It was about rebellion.

Zischer and the others walked to the wooden shelving. A metal can of gasoline had been hidden in the barracks earlier that day and now they reached for it. They splashed it onto clothes and piles of money. They splashed it onto the shelving itself. They dumped the last of it on a pile of woolen caps. They found bottles of whiskey and vodka and cognac and smashed those against the walls.

“Ready?” Moshe asked, picking up a cigarette lighter. There were hundreds of them in a wicker basket and he underhanded several to David Grinbaum. “Here. Take these.”

Machine guns continued to rattle and pound outside as the three prisoners put tongues of flame to wood. Blue and orange-yellow flared up the pine shelving. Shirts and caps and tables were soon burning. The three men (for in that moment they felt like men again) ran outside and left the front door open. Fresh air moved into the building and the flames grew and grew. Smoke began to cloud the windows.

They ran into another barrack and splashed yet another hidden can of gasoline onto piles of socks, corsets, dresses, and children’s clothing. It was also set on fire and they went into a third barrack—this one was packed with enormous burlap sacks of human hair—and the men stopped in their tracks.

They looked at each other, wondering what to do.

There was an odd smell hanging in the space and the noise around them fell away as they stared at the harvest of hair. It was unsettling. There was something intimate and private about this. They had gotten used to dead bodies and sizzling corpses, but here were the last tangible remains of the living. Cells and roots. Tresses of black and blond and gray and red. There were long braids that had been snipped off close to the base of the skull. And it was all going to be woven into fabric, made into blankets. Each sack was the size of a file cabinet and they stood in ordered rows like huge cancerous tumors. The words REICH PROPERTY were stamped onto each of them.

“Come,” Moshe Taube said.

He clicked one of his cigarette lighters. It was an older model that stayed lit until the hinged top was snapped back into place—only then would the flame go out—and he leaned it against a sack. The bag began to smolder as orange worms of light ate into the burlap.

Zischer and Grinbaum reached for their own lighters and they too rested little flames next to the dried hair. They went down the line, placing lighters here and there. The sacks grew into smoky balls of acrid flame.

The men ran outside and heard machine guns strafing into the woods. The first warehouse was now a raging fire, windows cracked and shattered, and a huge cloud of filthy smoke billowed out the front door. It lifted into the night like a dark tornado.

When the guards saw this, there was a slowing in the camp. A pause.

The machine guns stopped firing into the night and the searchlights rested on the tree branches.

Silence.

A moment of hesitation. Only the soft roar and crackle of the fire could be heard.

And then the searchlights wheeled around and illuminated the whole camp. Prisoners scurried away as bullets chewed up the Rose Garden. Clumps of wet dirt hopped into the air and prisoners began to shout.

“Stop!”

“Don’t shoot!”

The men still had three more barracks to torch but if they wanted to kill Guth they needed to do it now. Time was running out. Moshe Taube had a sharpened knife in his jacket while Zischer and Grinbaum had screwdrivers. The moon was a dirty white rag rising on the horizon, and they ran towards an area of camp they had only seen from afar: the private barracks of the SS. A light was on in Guth’s office.

Bullets splintered wood around them as they threw themselves into the wet, sandy muck to protect themselves. They breathed hard and wondered what to do. They spat sand from their mouths and looked at one another. Was Guth in there? If so, for how long?

Machine guns swept the other side of the Rose Garden. Everyone was shouting and moaning and screaming, the whole camp was a swirl of chaos, and that’s when someone with a deep voice got on the loudspeaker.

“Achtung! Achtung! Jetzt antreten zum Appell!”

The voice ordered the prisoners to line up in the Rose Garden, but everyone knew there would be no salvation or mercy if they did such a thing. They would all die. Zurich was in flames and the guards would reap a terrible vengeance. Whether they were shot by machine guns now or whether they were lined up before the Roasts later didn’t matter because, come morning, everyone would be turned into corpses. In that moment every prisoner in Lubizec knew what waited for them. They scattered from the searchlights. They ran. They hid.

“Antreten, antreten.”

As Zischer, Taube, and Grinbaum ran towards Guth’s office, a string of SS sprinted towards them, their legs working hard. One of these officers was Birdie Franz and when he saw the prisoners in an area of camp that was strictly off-limits to them, he pulled out his pistol. He lowered the snout of his gun and took a few steps forward.

“What’re you doing here?”

His green eyes were hard and piercing. Shadows of hellfire danced on the visor of his SS hat and this made the little death head’s emblem seem bright and alive. He took another step and repeated the question.

“I said, what are you doing here?”

Moshe Taube clicked his wet shoes together and came to attention. “Sir,” he said with a little Hitler salute, “I wish to report we have been sent to get buckets.”

“Buckets?”

“To put out the fire, sir.”

Birdie looked at the sooty cloud pouring up into the sky. It was a volcano of ash and spark. He lowered his gun, cocked his head back and forth as if weighing a thought, and then took off running with the other guards towards Zurich.

“Get those buckets,” he yelled back. “Hurry!”

We should remind ourselves that Birdie was in charge of these buildings, and he was probably worried about how he would explain the fire. Was it arson? An accident? Did he do it on purpose to hide the true extent of things he had stolen? These are all questions Berlin would have asked, and since he had already been investigated once before for missing inventory, he must have been anxious to put out the fire. No wonder he didn’t shoot any of the prisoners. This is almost certainly why he spared them and told them to get buckets.

“Antreten, antreten,” came the voice over the loudspeaker again. It sounded nervous and human.

The machine guns weren’t popping so often now, and Chaim Zischer took a moment to notice the bodies scattered around the camp, how the moon shimmered in invisible waves of heat, and how the barracks were being eaten alive. Something primal was devouring Zurich. The wooden walls were greased with fire and orange sparks drifted up. A window shattered and there was a sudden roar of flame.

“Antreten, antreten.”

The three men ran towards Guth’s office. A light was on and they moved down a brick path. Zischer was full of adrenaline when they came to the little wooden building. Two large flowerpots filled with melting snow and cigarette butts were on either side of the door. There was a sign that read, SS Obersturmführer Hans-Peter Guth. The prisoners looked at each other and got out their weapons. They turned the handle.

Avrom Petranker and Dov Damiel were happy to be under the engine when the machine guns began showering bullets into the camp. Their fingers danced on the cold metal until they found the plug. It was easy to unscrew because the oil was changed so frequently and because nothing was allowed to get rusty. If the engine went down for repairs it meant transports would get backed up on the line, and this in turn would make the higher-ups in Berlin furious. As a result, this engine, which ran for hours at a time, was in immaculate condition.

Petranker unscrewed the bolt and felt thick oil dribble onto his fingers. It threaded its way down to the hair of his forearm.

“Good,” he said, wiping it onto his trousers.

Even in the murky dark with searchlights slashing all around them, Dov Damiel could tell his fellow prisoner was smiling. They were supposed to start the engine but it was now so black they couldn’t find the ignition switch. Damiel slapped the instrument panel in frustration because they were running late to meet up with the others.

“Wait, wait,” Petranker said, holding up a finger.

Wordlessly, he went around to the gas tank and began to unscrew the cap. Two guards huffed past them with guns but they didn’t pay any attention, nor did they see the body splayed out on the concrete pad beneath the engine. Petranker threw the gas cap on the ground and went over to Oberhauser’s body. He pulled off a leather boot and yanked on the man’s damp sock—he stretched it out like taffy—and when it finally snapped free he bent down to sop up the oil. He stuffed it halfway into the gas tank.

“Got a lighter?”

Damiel shook his head. The men looked around for something to light the sock, and after a few seconds of cursing and patting their pockets Petranker glanced back at Oberhauser’s body. He searched through the man’s bloody clothes until he found something: a silver cigarette lighter.

“You okay with this?”

Damiel knew exactly what he meant. When the gasoline was ignited, the tank would blast apart and shrapnel would shred everything. Men on the other side of the camp would be knocked off their feet and an explosion, like a smoky exclamation point, would rise gently into the sky.

“I’m ready,” he said.

Once again, it is important to remember that Lubizec was a place without hope or mercy, and because none of the prisoners expected to survive the escape we shouldn’t view Damiel or Petranker as either heroic or fatalistic. They were just being realistic and they acted accordingly.

In an interview that was conducted in 1988, Damiel looks down at his gnarled hands and says about this moment, “It wasn’t that I wanted to die. Who does? If I was killed in an explosion, so be it. If I was shot, so be it. Sure I wanted more minutes of life, everyone wants such things, but I thought my body would be on the Roasts that night. We all did. And if I died in an explosion or if I died later at the hands of the SS, what did I care? Dead is dead. It was a matter of how I died, not if.”

Avrom Petranker flicked the thumbwheel of the cigarette lighter. A few weak sparks appeared in the dark. He tried again and again, but still nothing. He shook it next to his ear.

“Damn it.”

When asked about this in 1988, Dov Damiel smiles. “Ironic, no? A fire is eating the warehouses of Lubizec but we can’t light a stupid sock.”

The two men stood there and watched five more guards run towards Zurich. All of the prisoners were ordered over the loudspeaker to scoop snow into buckets and toss it onto the blaze. The machine guns slowed down and the searchlights were no longer making wild figure eights over the camp. It was during this time that a shaft of milky brightness cut over their heads and landed on the Road to Heaven just behind them. Damiel and Petranker weren’t in this beam but it was close enough to lift the darkness around them. Damiel saw the instrument panel on the engine and there, hanging above the keyhole of the ignition switch, was a little box with a white skull painted on it. He snapped it open and found a key tethered to a chain. The searchlight flicked away and the air around him was again doused with night. Damiel felt the instrument panel like a blind man until a little notched slot appeared under his fingertip. He pushed in the key. It clicked home.

“Stand back!” he yelled.

When he turned his wrist, the engine shook to life. The ground beneath his feet began to vibrate as pistons and valves clattered faster and faster. The moving parts inside the engine block were still bathed in oil but it was only a matter of time before the greased metal parts would shriek against each other and then, when this happened, everything would seize up. The whole crankcase would be torn up, destroyed.

“Do you have the clippers?” Damiel shouted over the noise.

Petranker nodded and they ran for the barbed-wire fence.

The door to Guth’s office wasn’t locked and when they stepped inside it was noticeably warmer. A song about homesickness was murmuring on the radio and the three men glanced sideways at one another. Where is he? they asked with shrugging shoulders.

A large oak desk, the very symbol of power, stood before them but they weren’t sure what to do. It was odd being in a place that reminded them of their former lives because it was like entering a lost world where everything felt civilized and polite. They could have been standing in a banker’s office or an accountant’s, but instead, this place belonged to a serial mass murderer. There was a typewriter along with a stack of carbon paper. There was a slide rule, a dictionary, an ashtray, a teapot, a fern, a desk calendar, a potbelly stove, a series of file cabinets, and a wicker basket overflowing with toys. Framed photos huddled beneath a lamp, and it was very strange, wholly bizarre, seeing Guth’s family. His wife looked like a movie actress with her long beautiful hair that splashed down around her shoulders, and his children smiled up from what looked like a camping trip.

So this was the epicenter of the camp?

Moshe Taube, Chaim Zischer, and David Grinbaum held their knives and screwdrivers. They stood on an expensive carpet and couldn’t remember the last time they had done such a thing. Their shoes were muddy so they backed away to keep it clean. There were books on a shelf with titles like Old Shatterhand, Applied Management & Systems, and A Short History of Barcelona. Guth’s diploma from the University of Hamburg was on the wall along with a photo of Hitler.

A machine gun sounded close to the window and this made them all turn around.

“We should go,” Moshe said, getting out a pocket watch. “It’s almost time.”

When writing about this in The Hell of Lubizec, Chaim Zischer mentions something worth repeating. In his typically blunt fashion he states that “This escape is not an adventure story and our revolt should not be read as entertainment. Do not focus on what we did. Focus instead on those who died.”

Later, in a 1985 interview, he added, “Hundreds of thousands were sealed into gas chambers and they watched a door swing shut on their futures. Whole villages died. Whole cities disappeared. That is the true history of Lubizec, not a handful of men running around with sharpened screwdrivers. People focus on our story but it is the story of nonescape that matters. I’m …” He stops here and waves his hand as if searching for the right word. “I’m such a tiny part of a much larger whole. I am nothing. I am like dust.”

And so, as we turn our attention back to the camp and back to the sparking machine guns, we should remember that what comes next should not be given greater attention than the days of annihilation that came before it. The real story of Lubizec is “Gas and Burn.” Not the wire cutters. Not the knives. Not the cigarette lighters. Not the running. No, none of it. The real story of Lubizec is about an engine coughing to life.

Before they left Guth’s office they ripped out the telephone cord and looked around for any guns that might be lying around. There were none, so they turned back into the night.

The Rose Garden was full of slashing lights and voices by this time. The men skirted the barracks and made their way to the fence. Bodies were slumped over in odd positions—many of them had been shot while running away. The fire from Zurich was enormous now and flames towered up from walls that were bright orange and white. Roofs collapsed in and jets of crackling sparks shot high into the sky. The guards held machine guns.

“Quickly, quickly! Throw the snow on it!”

The escaping men had gambled that a fire would distract the guards because they knew it was a major weakness of the camp; they knew there were no water pipes to douse these flames and, although there was a huge water tank next to the SS canteen for cooking and cleaning, there was no way to get this precious fluid over to Zurich. The idea that Jews might set fire to the camp never crossed the minds of the SS, and now because of this blinkered oversight based upon bigotry, the prisoners of Barrack 14 had the diversion they needed. They sprinted for the fence.

What happened next happened very fast.

Avrom Petranker was already snipping the wire when the others arrived. He worked quickly and grunted as first one strand was cut, then another. The metal was shiny and when it was cut it made a dull noise. The searchlights were on the main entrance and a murky orange from the fire danced all around them. The smell of burning wood hung in the air and it seemed almost like perfume because it was so different from the meaty bonfires they were used to. These flames were not made from burning fat and bone.

The strands of barbed wire fell. Petranker grunted his way forward.

“Two more,” he whispered. It was a triple-layered fence and he got down on his belly to clip the last strand. The ground beyond the camp was covered in untrampled snow.

“Hurry,” Damiel hissed.

Zischer’s hands were bloody as he pulled at the spiderwebbing of barbed wire. It ripped his coat and he got hung up in it. After a few tense moments they created a hole. Petranker crawled towards freedom and motioned for the others to follow.

“Let’s go,” he half shouted.

A group of prisoners throwing buckets of snow at a warehouse saw what was happening, and they backed towards the fence. Within a few seconds a steady stream of men were leaking out of the camp. The searchlights paced the front gate but, so far, the guards in the watchtowers hadn’t noticed the shadows leaving the camp. All eyes were on the fire.

This changed when a tremendous geyser of sound blasted up from beyond the barbed wire. It was a landmine, one of the hundreds that had been sown into the ground after Guth’s arrival in May 1942. The current prisoners of Lubizec knew nothing about the so-called “moat” because they arrived long after the explosives had been planted by previous prisoners. When one of these discs detonated, a cloud of fleshy dirt spewed into the air, and the searchlights immediately craned their necks towards the fence. Machine guns began shooting bullets into the night.

The men of Barrack 14 kept running. Zischer covered his head when falling clumps of dirt showered down onto him. The snow was soft and he tried to put his feet where others had stepped but it was hard to see with the searchlights following first this man, then that man. Zips of yellow flashed all around him and prisoners fell as if the machine guns were merely tripping them up. He was breathing hard and he expected bullets to spear his chest at any second. Someone next to him—Moshe?—Petranker?—stepped on a mine and was blasted into mist. A wet spray hit Zischer’s face but he kept on running. Another mine went off—Damiel?—but he couldn’t be sure. Dirt and body parts rained down onto his shoulders and he was certain, absolutely certain, that David Grinbaum had been turned into jagged tissue. Bullets winged around him and he knew men behind him were being shot dead at a dizzying speed. It was total confusion, naked fear, and as he ran deeper into the woods, it felt like he was running through wax.

After several long minutes, he pushed himself against a tree and tried not to breathe too loudly. His tongue was dry and, while panting, he peeked around the trunk to look at the camp. Bullets flitted from the towers in strange slow arcs and a second later he heard their sound.

The voice on the loudspeaker echoed as if underwater. “Attention. Attention. Return to your barracks immediately. Any prisoner not in his barrack will be shot. Repeat. Any prisoner not in his barrack will be shot.”

The snow around him was slushy and he bent down to wet his lips. He chewed, he swallowed. It felt good to have something in his belly and he glanced around the woods before he broke into a wild run once again. Another explosion went off far behind him, and again there was the distant rattling of machine guns.

Zischer tumbled down a hill, hitting a large rock at the bottom, and he wondered where the others were. He paused to listen and during this moment he heard something behind him. It sounded like snapping branches and he flattened himself against an oak tree. The bark dug into his back. Blood pulsed in his eardrums.

“… m?”

Footsteps crunched over the snow.

“Chaim?”

It was Dov Damiel. They embraced and allowed themselves to weep for a few seconds. They were alive, they were free, and they weren’t wounded. They slipped to the ground and held each other.

What sounded like an air-raid siren came from the camp. They sat there for a long moment wondering what to do. They buttoned their wet coats and adjusted their hats as the wind made the branches sway and clack overhead. The air-raid siren whined on and a little farmhouse on the horizon snuffed out its lights.

“What now?” Dov whispered.

Zischer shrugged.

They crouched behind a tree and spoke with their hands.

Let’s go this way.

No, this way.

Is that a road?

I think so.

The night was salted with stars as they trudged through sloppy wet snow. Their ankles were numb, they were shaking, their stomachs popped and gurgled, but they kept moving away from the camp, always away from the camp.

They found a dirt road and whispered about what to do next. It angered Zischer that he had to remain motionless behind an evergreen bush as they discussed their next move. All he wanted to do was run and run. It felt like he was stuck in a world of slow motion. It felt like a thick moony paste was weighing him down.

The headlights of a canvas-topped army truck came toward them. It slid down the road and squealed to a stop just beyond where they were hiding. A door opened and a guard stood on one of the running boards. The yellow headlights illuminated the road ahead and the engine thrummed. Exhaust hung in the air.

“Prisoners of Lubizec,” the guard shouted to the surrounding landscape. “Come home to warm food. We won’t hurt you.” A pause and then, “Prisoners of Lubizec, are you there? Can you hear me?”

Zischer and Damiel lowered themselves deeper into the snow.

“My Jew friends, where do you think you are? This is the Third Reich. The whole country is a prison for you. We will find you.” The guard pulled out his gun and fired blindly into the woods ahead. The crack echoed through the trees like dying thunder.

“Do you hear me, prisoners of Lubizec? The whole country is a prison for you fucking Jews. The whole country!”

He climbed back into the truck, and as it gear-shifted away, a few more shots were fired out the window.

The yellow headlights rounded a corner and felt their way through the woods. A moment passed and an invisible blanket of silence settled back onto the road. High above, a shooting star burrowed through the night and an owl called from somewhere far away.

The two former prisoners stood up and brushed snow off their clothes.

They were free, but now what?^*

^*Now what indeed? Perhaps it is good to pause here and remember that successful escapes like this one also happened at Sobibór and Treblinka in 1943. Hundreds and hundreds of prisoners escaped from these two camps. A year later, there was even a doomed revolt in Auschwitz-Birkenau where prisoners managed to blow up Crematoria IV. In each of these cases, the prisoners staged an uprising because they saw themselves as part of a larger whole and they didn’t expect to live. It wasn’t about heroics. It was about making a statement and trying to slow down the genocidal gears of killing. Those that managed to escape were deeply surprised to find themselves still alive, so is it any wonder that Chaim Zischer and Dov Damiel glanced at each other, uncertain what to do next?