It was late on the evening of 16 August when the train finally pulled into a side track next to a small station, surrounded by barbed wire. Once assembled on the platform, they were marched off down a straight, well-constructed road, passing a garage and several modern-looking barracks along the way. In the darkness it was difficult to make out where they were being led; however, it wasn't long before they could begin to make out machine-gun towers on the perimeter ahead, and the intimidating silhouette of the main gatehouse, with a clock above and iron gates beneath. As they approached, Peulevé could make out a sign proclaiming Recht Oder Unrecht – Mein Vaterland (Right or Wrong – My Country), and another, Jedem Das Seine (To Each His Own), wrought into the gates. Once they had passed through, there was some waiting around during which time the guards began shouting ‘Mitzen ab!’ knocking off the hats of those who didn't understand and stamping them in the dirt. Marching off again past lines of long wooden huts, they entered a large hall where they were handed over to several men in striped uniforms, carrying the title of Lagerschutz (camp police) on black armbands.
One of them spoke good English and told Peulevé that special orders had been received for them, suggesting that they might be going straight to the crematorium where the executions took place. Despite offering this news, ‘which he seemed to take as being quite normal’,1 he went on to describe something of life in the camp. He explained that it was largely run by the prisoners themselves: the Lagerältester (Camp Elder) oversaw all the departments, which were in turn supervised by the Kapos; beneath them were the Block-ältesters, who were in charge of individual barracks, and numerous other positions designated for more menial tasks. Half of the inmates were German criminals, the rest of them coming from all across Europe, many having been rounded up and transported west as the Germans had retreated out of Russia. He also warned them that there were many informers in the camp and that anything they said could easily find its way back to the SS.
They were held in the block for several hours until the early morning, by which time it had become clear that they were not to be eliminated, and instead were led into the delousing area:
We passed through a hall where we were made to empty our pockets, the contents of which were put into little bags. We then stripped, and our clothes were put on clothes hangers and enclosed in large paper bags; we were given a metal disc as a receipt. From here we went into a long room full of white-coated barbers, each of whom had electric clippers with which he shaved us completely from head to foot. After the clippers we were doused in disinfectant which burned horribly, each given a handful of soft soap and passed into an enormous white tiled room with hundreds of sprinklers in the ceiling. The hot water was turned on and we had a good shower.2
The earlier warning about executions was confirmed when Hessel spoke to one of the barbers, who told him that those housed in the delousing block overnight were usually bound for the crematorium the next morning. After walking out of the showers, they were issued with striped camp uniforms along with an assortment of illfitting civilian clothes and wooden clogs from the quartermaster's stores.
During this degrading process a scrawny young English-speaking prisoner had approached them, compounding their fears by telling them that they were in ‘one of the worst concentration camps in Germany, that the death rate was appalling, the treatment the worst’3 and that, as communists ruled large parts of the camp's internal running, they should not admit to being officers, being indicative of an elevated social position. This man was Maurice Pertschuk, a Jewish SOE agent code-named Eugène and known in the camp as ‘Martin Perkins’. He had landed by felucca during the spring of 1942 to organize F Section's PRUNUS circuit in the Toulouse area and was arrested a year later along with his W/T operator Marcus Bloom (Urbain), Peulevé's training partner at Thame Park.
Having just turned twenty-three, Pertschuk had journeyed to Buchenwald in January with three other F Section men. Alfred and Henry Newton (Artus, Auguste) were prime examples of SOE's willingness to recruit from all backgrounds – although born to British parents, they had spent most of their working lives as variety artists, touring the Continent under the title of The Boorn Brothers. Volunteering as despatch riders for the French Government at the outbreak of war, they headed south after the collapse in 1940 and endured months of incarceration in Spain before reaching Gibraltar and Liverpool; on arrival they found out their families had been killed during their evacuation to Britain, their ship having been torpedoed after leaving Portugal. Consumed with the overwhelming desire for revenge, the brothers were quickly passed through to F Section and accepted for training in early 1942; Gielgud was left in no doubt about their capabilities for violence, recommending that Alfred in particular might be best employed in France simply as a ‘thug’. Ultimately they were sent as sabotage instructors to the Lyon area in June, but dogged by poor communications, lack of money and uneasy relations with some of their contacts, their GREEN-HEART circuit largely failed to deliver, and in April 1943 they were given away by an informer and severely tortured by the infamous ‘Butcher of Lyon’, Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie, before being sent to Paris.
The fourth agent, a former commando named Christopher Burney (Charles), had met with even less luck, being sent to join AUTOGIRO in May 1942, a circuit in Normandy which had already been penetrated by the Germans. Narrowly avoiding capture when visiting the address of his contact in Caen, he soon learned that his organizer was now in jail, but rather than fleeing to Spain he chose to try and build a new circuit under his own command. It took nearly three months for the Germans to track him down, eventually finding him asleep one morning in his hotel room. Refusing to divulge any details on his mission, Burney was subjected to eighteen months in solitary confinement at Fresnes.
Despite Pertschuk's protestations to keep quiet about their officer status, Yeo-Thomas, Hessel and a number of others declared their rank and other details to the registrar (Yeo-Thomas continued to use the pseudonym ‘Kenneth Dodkin’, an alias which had saved him from certain execution in Paris). Having been registered they were then each given their camp number and small triangles to sew onto their clothes; Peulevé's number was 12332. The colour of the triangles denoted the type of prisoner: Peulevé's group were red, for political prisoners, green was for common criminals, yellow for Jews, pink for homosexuals and violet for Jehovah's witnesses. Except for German prisoners, each triangle was also marked with a letter to indicate their country of origin.
The group was then taken to Block 17, a smaller building than the rest used as a quarantine or housing ‘special prisoners’, and separated from the surrounding blocks by barbed wire. Entering the hut they were first confronted by the washing area and latrines, with doorways on either side; one led to the living quarters, occupied by tables and lockers; the other housed the dormitory, capable of accommodating around forty men in tiered bunks lining up either side, each containing a thin straw mattress and a small blanket.
As their first day passed within the confines of Buchenwald, Peulevé and his group were still bewildered and as yet had little understanding of its real horrors. Built by prisoners in 1937 on a slope at the base of the Ettersburg mountain, a few miles outside the town of Weimar, Buchenwald concentration camp was created to provide the Nazis with a means of confining those who either opposed them politically or were considered racially or morally inferior. The SS soon installed a number of facilities outside the main compound for the benefit of its garrison, including riding stables, a falconry and even a zoo for officers’ families to visit, but accommodation for those on the other side of the wire remained very different. Though the population amounted to just a few thousand inmates at the outbreak of war, this figure had tripled by late 1943, and by August 1944 the camp was chronically overcrowded, holding more than 82,000 prisoners.
For the SS, the objective of Buchenwald was largely to ensure that there was enough human labour to run the factories, and to plunder any belongings the prisoners had surrendered when entering. Who lived and died was not considered important and the actual task of supplying manpower was delegated to the Kapos, who reported to the SS NCOs. Thus the prisoners effectively determined each others’ fates, with those belonging to the dominant factions taking control. In the early days of the camp the criminals, or ‘Greens’, had been given the administrative power, which gave them the freedom to hoard all the available rations for themselves and let others starve or be worked to death. However, when an efficient and skilled labour force was needed for the newly installed Gustloff arms factory in March 1943, the communists showed themselves to be far more suitable governors. Possessing more qualified workers, a greater talent for organization and a common outlook, it was to them that the SS decided to hand over the management of the camp's departments, including the all-important Arbeitstatistik (labour records office), which allotted what kind of work each prisoner would do, holding the power of life and death over thousands of men.
The communists, as Pertschuk had warned, declared that officers were the product of the ruling classes and, like the capitalists, were to be disposed of first. Shortly after his arrival, Burney had narrowly avoided being transferred to Dora, one of Buchenwald's worst satellite camps, after being accused of being one of the biggest holders of arms shares in England. Less fortunate was Marcel Michelin from the French family of tyre manufacturers, who was nearly sixty when he was sent to Buchenwald for resistance activities. The German communists were quickly onto him and through their control of the Arbeitstatistik bypassed medical and other formalities, deporting him to a kommando (work party) at Ohrdruf where the mortality rate was more than 2,000 a month. He died shortly afterwards. Burney stated that, owing to these Germans’ particular dislike of the French, nine out of ten were sent on transports and probable death. Although the disciplined ruthlessness of the communists was in part affected by racial prejudices, these were rife throughout the camp's factions. The Russians despised the French, German and Slav populations, the Poles hated the Russians, and there was a widespread dislike for the ‘bourgeois’ Czechs.
The thirty-seven new arrivals had begun to attract a lot of attention from the rest of the camp and it wasn't long before some of the emaciated onlookers approached the wire with questions, asking who they were and why had they been brought here. Some of the Kapos even offered them cigarettes. The group was divided in its reaction, some making a point of playing to the crowd, declaring that they were agents and important members of the Resistance, while others were more reticent; Peulevé noted that their impact on this ‘enormous concentrated mass’4 of people was such that they were almost treated like royalty. The SS were certainly determined to keep them separate, ordering that they were not to take part in the daily appel (roll-call) in the main square, being counted on parade outside their block instead. Neither were they expected to work, or visit the canteen with the other prisoners, since food would be brought to them. Consequently they spent most of the day loitering in their compound, but were only allowed inside the block during the evening.
After Fresnes, the group was surprised to find that their rations in Block 17 were much better and Peulevé was able to regain some of the weight he had lost over the past few months. It was clear, however, that something more had to be done if the group was to avoid becoming like their SOE colleagues and Yeo-Thomas held a meeting to see what information could be gathered on the camp's structure. Unable to leave the confines of the barbed wire, they relied on visits by Pertschuk and Burney to tell them all they knew, though the latter was able to call on Pieter Cool, a Dutch naval officer who helped obtain permission for them to move around the camp.
On first inspection the numerous watchtowers around the perimeter and numbers of guards both inside and outside the electrified fences suggested that the chances of escape were negligible. Equally depressing was their first real glimpse of how bad the conditions were elsewhere in Buchenwald, especially within the separate area known as the Kleine Lager or ‘Little Camp’. Originally built in 1942to quarantine new inmates, the Little Camp was struggling to accommodate the rapid influx of new prisoners – each of its seventeen blocks now held as many as 2,000 men, four times the number they were originally designed for. The overcrowding became so bad that Block 61 was set aside for the administration of lethal injections in order to reduce the numbers; however, the daily toll of dead could not be cremated quickly enough and to make more room corpses were often thrown out of the blocks and left to rot in the compound. Alfred Newton later found it ‘impossible to describe the dirt, the muck, and the maddening scenes of brutality, and the bad behaviour of German political prisoners in charge of the foreigners’.5
Though there seemed little hope of finding a way out, Yeo-Thomas had at least been able to make contact with some of the camp's resistance elements, most notably amongst the Russians and Poles who had established efficient intelligence networks. The group was also allowed to visit the Effektenkammer (the depository for prisoners’ effects) to collect a few of their things, some of them being afforded the small luxury of shaving using a razor from Benoist's belongings. This consideration for cleanliness, along with their daily exercise regimes outside Block 17 only served to impress upon other prisoners that these people were indeed separated from the rest, and were doing everything they could to retain some semblance of civilized life. To pass the time RF agent Desmond Hubble had also retrieved a small travel chess set which was used to hold a tournament, while cards made by the young Canadian Frank Pickersgill were used to play bridge.
Three days after the arrival of Peulevé's group, 168 Allied personnel appeared at the camp under the leadership of a New Zealander, Squadron Leader Philip Lamason. Despite their eligibility to be sent to a normal POW camp, they were accused of being Luftgangsters or ‘terror fliers’ and thus were treated like all other newcomers, being stripped of their uniforms and issued only with a shirt, trousers and jacket (but no shoes) before being installed in the appalling squalor of the Little Camp. Since there was no room in the blocks they were forced to sleep on a cobbled area outside, though Yeo-Thomas managed to enlist the help of two Russian officers and smuggled several dozen blankets through to Lamason a few days later. Yeo-Thomas had also been eager to discuss the possibility of escape to England using planes based at a nearby airfield, but the plan was based on little more than fantasy and desperation, being rejected by other resistance leaders as foolhardy and likely to result in severe reprisals for the rest of the inmates.
On 24 August, the camp was the target of an Allied bombing raid, its main objective being the factory buildings nearby. Hessel comments that for those in Block 17, the sight of American aircraft was an encouraging sign: ‘We thought, stupidly enough, that it meant that the camp was known, and that the horrors of the camp were known, and that the Allies would try to do something about it.’6 However, this initial boost to morale was soon tempered by the consequences of the attack, as those trapped in the Gustloff factories and SS-owned Deutsche Ausrüstungs Werke (German Equipment Works) were prevented from running away by the guards, who shot anyone who attempted to flee. The raid completely destroyed all but two of the Gustloff buildings, claiming the lives of over 300 prisoners and wounding more than four times as many; an SS barracks was also hit, being responsible for the deaths of eighty SS personnel.
The confusion may have suggested the possibility of escape, but the damage to the perimeter was negligible. Some symbolic hope arose from the aftermath of this grim day, however, as Göethe's Oak, sited near the laundry and thought to be the tree under which the writer often sat in reflection, had been felled by the attack. According to a popular myth the tree's destruction would signal the fall of Germany itself and some of the more superstitious prisoners thought that this was a sign of the beginning of the end for the Nazis. In conditions such as these, such faith could make all the difference between hope and despair.
The raid predictably made things worse for Lamason's airmen who were already considered terrorists by the SS, but they were also beginning to experience the effects of exposure from sleeping out in the open, with thirty of the group being afflicted by pneumonia and pleurisy. Their future looked bleak, though Lamason and most of his group would eventually make it out of Buchenwald with the help of Burney, who had a note smuggled out to a nearby Luftwaffe station at Nohra, informing them that Allied aircrew were being held at the camp. A senior officer arrived to demand that they be treated as POWs, and had them transferred to Stalag Luft III at Sagan on 19 October.
Eleven sick men had to be left behind, including a young Canadian, Ed Carter-Edwards. Having to endure several more weeks in the filth of the Little Camp before another visit from the Luftwaffe eventually secured his release, he remembered how respite could never be found from the horrors surrounding him:
I feel that what was responsible for the mental breakdown of many of the people… was the realisation that there was no avenue of escape; no future; death by disease, death by starvation or being transported to work in the areas being bombed. It looked like no matter which way you turned, death faced you. While you were there and weren't actually working, you walked around aimlessly, viewing the experiences of other human beings and the indignities they suffered. It was a landscape devoid of grass, trees, shrubs – no birds – nothing but suffering, starvation, diseased bodies all around you day and night… Death was everywhere.7
Early in September, Peulevé's group was able to make contact with Alfred Balachowsky (Serge) through Robert Benoist, both of whom had been associated with the PROSPER circuit; Balachowsky now held a responsible position in one of the medical blocks, having been professor at the Ecole National d'Agriculture and head of the Institut Pasteur in Paris before his arrest in July 1943. He had many contacts in that part of the camp and was willing to help with an escape plan, but could not offer any immediate ideas for getting them out. Meanwhile Yeo-Thomas, Peulevé, Hessel and several of the others continued to make enquiries amongst various factions, but politics and personal affiliations stifled any progress. Hessel recalls that ‘somebody had tried Manhès [Henri Manhès, previously the assistant of de Gaulle’s emissary Jean Moulin] and Marcel Paul [French trade unionist] but they had said, “We are sorry… we have to save our people first.”’8
Around 1.30 pm on the afternoon of 9 September the usual appel was supplemented by an order for sixteen men from Block 17 to report to the main gate. The names called out on the camp's loudspeakers were Hubble, Kane, Benoist, Defendini, Allard, Mackenzie, Garel, Garry, Detal, Leccia, Steele, Pickersgill, Mayer, Macalister, Rechenmann and Geelen. No one in the remainder of the group considered anything untoward in this and it had always been Peulevé's assumption that if the SS had wanted them dead they would have killed them in France. Watching them march off, Peulevé, Yeo-Thomas, Hessel, Frager and Southgate were nevertheless alarmed by the Blockältester's worried look, who muttered that this was ‘a bad business’, though they agreed not to discuss it with the others until they had more information. As evening approached there was still no word and suspicions slowly began to turn to fear as the fates of those taken became increasingly precarious.
The next morning a Pole from the Little Camp came to inform them that the sixteen men had reportedly been beaten, but were at least still alive. Later in the day another rumour suggested that they had been seen exercising outside, but no details were forthcoming on the reason why they were being held. However, the following morning the Pole brought more gloomy news, stating that another within his organization had seen the bodies of their comrades, and it seemed that they had been executed the previous night. Shortly afterwards Balachowsky was able to pass on confirmation of the killings: having first been beaten up, all sixteen had been hanged from meat hooks in the walls of the crematorium basement at 5.30 pm, and would have probably taken five to ten minutes to die from slow strangulation. The news was broken to the rest of the group. Some, as Hessel remembers, did not think the remainder were under threat: ‘They said, “So these sixteen were condemned, then perhaps we are not, because if we are, why haven't they taken us too?” ’9 However, others saw that this was probably wishful thinking. The chances were that they would all face execution and not even be spared the mercy of a quick death.
In this grim atmosphere Peulevé accompanied Yeo-Thomas to the laboratory in Block 50, where Balachowsky hid them in order that Yeo-Thomas could write two final letters. When he had finished both men set about enciphering them, Yeo-Thomas using his ‘Sea-horse’ code and Peulevé his old Playfair; these were then passed on to Heinz Baumeister, an associate of Balachowsky's, who later smuggled them out of the camp bound inside a book. The first message read:
Invaluable documents concerning latest research and discoveries bacteriological warfare also plans secret underground dumps and factories kept here at Buchenwald stop all prepared to secure them but can succeed only providing rapid assistance arrives just before or immediately upon German capitulation as camp officials will try to destroy all valuable documents warrants every effort stop speedy arrival airborne or para-troops essential will find organised assistance within camp but I have no arms stop bearer this message trustworthy and knows everything awaits reply and instructions stop acknowledge by Iodoform [coded BBC message] du moineau au lapin stop have everything under control and hope for early victory stop vingt cinq septembre all my love Barbara Tommy stop Cheerio Dizzy Asymptote.10
Yeo-Thomas also sent a second, longer letter to his commanding officer, Colonel Dismore (‘Dizzy’):
14 September 1944
My dear Dizzy,
These are ‘famous last words’ I am afraid, but one has to face death one day or another so I will not moan and get down to brass tacks.
[Yeo-Thomas goes on to describe his time since being captured and the events prior to their departure from Paris.] The journey here was an eventful one, it took 8 days. The first man I ran into when being entrained was Hessel of the BCRA and the second was Hubble. We had various adventures, all were handcuffed the whole time, 19 men in one compartment and 18 in another. We could not move being packed in like sardines. The gates of the compartments were padlocked and we had very little air, no food had been provided for. We were given 1 day's rations which had to last 5 days, luckily some had Red Cross parcels or we would have starved. The train was bombed and machine-gunned on the way and we had a very narrow shave. Our escorts ran and left us helpless, had the train caught fire we would have burned like trapped rats. We had to stop at Saarbrucken for 3 days in a punishment and reprisals camp, and were beaten up on arrival. As usual I seemed to attract particular attention and got well and truly slapped and cuffed. We were confined for three days and nights, 37 of us in a hut 9 feet by 7 feet by 7 feet. It was Hell. We then came on to this place Buchenwald. On the way our escorts plundered and stole practically all our effects. Never believe about German honesty, they are the biggest thieves, liars, bullies and cowards I have ever met. In addition, they delight in torturing people and gloat over it. Upon arrival which took place about midnight, we were locked up in the disinfection quarters and next morning we were nearly hanged summarily, but temporarily reprieved. We were stripped, completely shorn and dressed in prison rags, losing our few remaining belongings, and 16 of us, including Hubble, were told to report to a certain place. We never saw them again and found out that they were being hung without trial on the night of 11/12September. They have been cremated so no trace remains of them. We are now awaiting our turn. There are 170 airmen (British and American) brought down and captured in France, but they are being treated as Terror Fliers and sleeping in the open, living under appalling conditions in violation of all conventions. They ought to be treated as POW. Men die like flies here. I sent a message to you through Geneva. I hope you received it, but have no means of telling. The bearer of this letter will give you all details so I will not say more – whatever he tells you is Gospel truth. He is no romancer, and he will never be able to really do justice to the horrors perpetrated here. Dizzy, see to it that our people never let ourselves be softened to the German people, or there will be another war in 15 years’ time and all our lives will have been sacrificed in vain. I leave it to you and others to see that retribution is fierce. It will never be fierce enough.11
A third, unenciphered message was later written asking for the recipient to transmit these messages to London and pass the reply back to the camp, emphasizing the need for haste and that ‘delay may mean disaster’.12 Yet despite this urgency, Peulevé and Yeo-Thomas did not experience the panic or anxiety that one might imagine. Yeo-Thomas recalled, ‘I seemed to have lost all feeling and become a machine. I had no fear of death in any shape or form, and I felt absolutely no apprehension. Never during those days did I worry for myself; it was not a matter of courage, I just cannot explain it.’13 Peulevé was equally untroubled by the sentence that awaited him, although Violette's welfare still continued to preoccupy his thoughts:
I had come a long way since 1939. Having run, I had returned. During my return I had proved that, well equipped, I could dish out more than I received. I knew that I had deserved the fate of my comrades and I was waiting patiently for the rope that would put an end to the equation. One thing I knew – I had vindicated my cowardice. But what I wished… and prayed to know was what had happened to Violet. That question, I felt sure, could only be answered when the hangman's rope had worked its effect and I was before the Eternal Judge, who no doubt would tell me exactly what the situation was.14
The possibility of escape now seemed further away than ever, but Yeo-Thomas continued to talk with Balachowsky. Eventually exhausting their options, one desperate plan still remained, which would involve switching identities with patients in the Hygiene-Institut. This innocuous-sounding unit had been established by the Waffen-SS to develop new treatments for injuries and diseases afflicting its troops and was responsible for carrying out all manner of horrific experiments on prisoners to further its research. The Institut used Block 46 to accommodate these ‘guinea pigs’, which from August 1943 also housed the Abteilung für Fleckfieber und Virus-forschung (Department for Typhus and Virus Research), testing new vaccines on hundreds of subjects who had either contracted typhus in the camp or been purposely infected by the clinic's staff. It would be these cases that Yeo-Thomas and his men would try to substitute.
Though the chances of success seemed negligible, it was arranged for Yeo-Thomas to see Eugen Kogon, who worked as a secretary for SS Sturmbannführer Erwin Ding, known as Ding-Schuler, the doctor in charge of Blocks 46 and 50 (the illegitimate son of Baron von Schuler, he preferred to incorporate his father's name with that of his adopted family, Ding). Kogon was an Austrian Catholic writer who had actively protested against the Nazis before they marched into Vienna in 1938, and became one of Buchenwald's first political deportees soon afterwards; an important figure within the hospital and the camp in general, he was respected for his longevity as well as his influential position. Agreeing to help, he met with Yeo-Thomas in Block 50 to work out the details.
Their plan was to approach Ding-Schuler with a proposition, requesting his assistance in return for signed testimonies from Yeo-Thomas and several other officers, stating that he had been instrumental in saving the lives of British and French servicemen. By September 1944 the Americans had already reached the Siegfried Line on Germany's western border and Ding-Schuler knew that defeat was now only months away; if he presented this evidence to the Allies it would at least provide some protection for him and his family when the details of his experiments were exposed to the outside world. Yeo-Thomas also emphasized to Kogon that, as the senior officer of the group, his priority was to rescue as many of the twenty remaining men in Block 17 as possible and that his name would be at the bottom of the list of those to be saved.
Kogon went immediately to talk with Ding-Schuler who was just about to leave the camp for ten days, leaving Yeo-Thomas nervously waiting for news. Eventually Balachowsky returned, reporting that the meeting had gone well but that a compromise would have to be made. In short, Ding-Schuler had been conducive to the idea and there was agreement in principle to the plan. However, he would only be prepared to save three men, not twenty-one. Furthermore, Yeo-Thomas must be included with them, in order to provide the testimony of the Commanding Officer. He immediately protested but was in no position to dictate terms, as Ding-Schuler would only take what he considered to be a worthwhile risk. Either three would live, or none at all.
Another hurdle also had to be cleared, in that the brutish-looking Kapo of Block 46, Arthur Dietzsch, would have to cooperate for the plan to work. A German political prisoner since 1924, Dietzsch had already spent six years at Buchenwald, during which time he had gained a reputation for being ruthless in his work, treating the terrified guinea-pig prisoners with indifference or even cruelty to keep order on the ward. Through Heinz Baumeister, an orderly who worked under Dietzsch, Kogon offered him the same kind of testimony offered to Ding-Schuler, though he was careful not to inform Dietzsch of the deal Yeo-Thomas had already made. The Kapo gave his assurance that he could be relied upon, giving Kogon and his confederates real hope that the plot might work. Even so, the restrictions imposed by Ding-Schuler meant that Yeo-Thomas had a terrible decision to make.
It had already been stipulated that he must take one of the three places to provide testimony after the war, but which two members of the group should accompany him? Balachowsky recommended that one Briton and one Frenchman should be selected, though this criterion can hardly have helped Yeo-Thomas in his agonizing choice. Moreover, it was a decision only he could make, as to explain the plan to anyone else would only jeopardize its chances.
Why he finally selected Peulevé over the other British officers isn't clear – perhaps it was the assistance he gave when coding the letters sent through Baumeister, or just his strength of character that persuaded him. As far as the third choice was concerned, Yeo-Thomas had narrowed his options down to two men: Henri Frager, probably because of his seniority in the Resistance, and his translator Stéphane Hessel, the BCRA agent whom he had known in London. Whether Yeo-Thomas felt that the younger man was more deserving of the chance or that Frager's age was against him is open to question, but in the end he opted to take Hessel. He told Balachowsky of his decision, who would only inform the other two once the plan had been initiated.
The main reason for Yeo-Thomas to go first was to test Dietzsch's trustworthiness. Once summoned to the medical block, Dietzsch would administer an injection to produce a high fever imitating typhus, after which Yeo-Thomas would return to Block 17 and wait for the serum to do its work. He would then report the next morning to the hospital, where he would be officially pronounced a genuine typhus case and taken into Block 46 as a new ‘guinea pig’. If Yeo-Thomas made it safely into the hands of Kogon's team, a message would be sent for the other two to follow; should he die after being admitted, it would be assumed that Dietzsch was treacherous and the plan would be aborted.
The first stage was successfully carried out, with Yeo-Thomas being smuggled across to see Dietzsch and receive the injection, returning to Block 17 shortly after to wait for the symptoms to appear. Urgently drawing Peulevé and Hessel aside, he explained that both of them had been chosen to accompany him, but it was imperative not to divulge anything to the rest of the group. They were also told to expect Balachowsky to deliver further instructions, which they were to obey without question. The fever began to show overnight and by the morning Yeo-Thomas had reported to the Blockältester who agreed for a Czech doctor to accompany him to the hospital. As planned, Dietzsch was present to confirm the diagnosis of typhus and had him transferred to Block 46 immediately.
Yeo-Thomas sweated and shivered under the effects of the injection for another three days before feeling satisfied enough with Dietzsch's conduct to send word to the others, via Kogon, that they could now follow. No time was wasted, and on the morning of 19 September the young German chief of Block 17 allowed Peulevé and Hessel to accompany Dietzsch to Block 46 (this move was not exceptional, since healthy prisoners were known to be picked for experiments). Passing through the barbed-wire cordon that separated the block from the rest of the camp, they were hurried into a room on the first floor where they were reunited with Yeo-Thomas, who had fully recovered from his faked illness. The room was inhabited by two English-speaking orderlies, Schalker and Gadzinski, and divided in two by a row of cupboards, one side containing four beds on which Peulevé, Yeo-Thomas and Hessel would sleep. This would now be their refuge until new identities could be taken from three patients in the ward downstairs.
To increase security Dietzsch sent away several of the block's staff to attend to other duties – the fewer people in the building, the better the chances of keeping their secret. Despite having to duck as they passed the windows, they were relatively safe in their hideout and even helped with the hospital paperwork, but this still left a lot of time in which they had to amuse themselves, playing cards, chess or an improvised game of their own called ‘Silly Buggers’. They would also occasionally receive odd snippets of information from Kogon, and books and cigarettes from Dietzsch. Hessel remembers the bond that developed between the three of them: ‘It really was a very solid little group, and we never had the slightest tension between ourselves.’15
Several days later a group of Frenchmen arrived from a labour camp in Cologne, a number of which were typhus cases. On their arrival at Block 46, Dietzsch identified a few of them that resembled Peulevé and his colleagues, and Hessel undertook the macabre task of interviewing them in order to assess their backgrounds and suitability. These enquiries identified three in particular that seemed to fit their ages and physical builds: Michel Boitel, Maurice Chouquet and Marcel Seigneur. Although it was agreed that they had found the best matches, Peulevé, Yeo-Thomas and Hessel were now placed in an even more ghoulish situation, in that their chances of survival depended on how quickly these men died. All three made it clear that they would not advocate hastening their deaths to save themselves; however, that didn't make the dilemma any easier for Dietzsch, and it occurred to Hessel that he might ignore their wishes in order to eliminate the danger to his own life.
Though the plan had succeeded so far, on 4 October the dreaded appel was once again followed by an order for another eleven prisoners from Block 17 to assemble at the main gate. The names called were Frager, Barrett, Mulsant, Loison, de Séguier, Vellaud, Chaigneau, Gerard, Corbusier, Wilkinson – and ‘Poole’, the name Peulevé had given when being registered. When he did not appear with the rest of the group he was quickly traced to the hospital and two guards arrived at Block 46 to see Dietzsch; the fear of being contaminated by the patients meant that such visits were often avoided, though on this occasion they were acting under the Commandant's orders and had no choice. Dietzsch made sure that he wasn't around to talk to them when they arrived, but when they made a second visit shortly afterwards he referred them to Ding-Schuler's order that no one was to enter the ward without his consent. Knowing what severe repercussions awaited Kogon if the plan became known to the SS, Peulevé sent a note to him in Block 50:
I should like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything that you are doing for us. If I must go, it will not be because you have failed to do everything possible to save me.
With sincerest gratitude, your H.P.16
Dietzsch found out that a stretcher was being sent for Peulevé, and quickly had to give him an injection to induce a high temperature and simulate the appearance of typhus – had the guards realized that he was not sick, there was a good chance that the entire plot would collapse. Within a few hours the effects of Dietzsch's medication were clearly evident as Peulevé started to become delirious, his temperature having soared to 1058 by the time he was wheeled onto the ward to join the guinea pig patients. Although these symptoms were convincing enough to suggest typhus, they were also beginning to pose a genuine threat to his life and Dietzsch had to keep a close eye on his condition.
The Camp Commandant, SS Oberführer Hermann Pister, had been given clear instructions from Berlin that this man was to be executed whatever his condition, and thought that it would be easiest to shoot him on the stretcher. Ding-Schuler had been away in Weimar whilst these events were happening and was hurriedly recalled by Kogon; on reporting to Pister he attempted to buy some time, making the case that a typhus patient running such a high temperature could not be removed from the block due to the dangers of contamination. This request made no impression on the Commandant, who wasn't interested how it was done so long as the order was carried out. Ding-Schuler then relented slightly, agreeing that the execution could be performed by lethal injection and even offered to perform the task himself. Refusing this option, Pister did however agree to his third suggestion, which was to give the job to SS Hauptscharführer Gerhard Schiedlausky, another doctor at the camp. Having pursued a grim career experimenting on women prisoners at Ravensbrück before his transfer to Buchenwald, Dr Schiedlausky had begun to be troubled by the actions of his past and Ding-Schuler considered it unlikely that he would carry out the execution himself.
This prediction proved to be correct and worked to his advantage as Schliedlausky delegated the job to Friedrich Wilhelm, a white-haired, elderly looking medical NCO in charge of Block 61. Having a reputation for executing prisoners without hesitation, Wilhelm was also an easier man to manipulate, being known to have a weakness for the bottle. Dietzsch was waiting with schnapps when he arrived at Block 46 and encouraged him to drink so much that by the time he came to administer the lethal injection he could barely stand; led onto the ward, Dietzsch then showed him one of the other patients and explained that this was the man to be executed. Using all his powers of persuasion, he suggested to Wilhelm that injecting this pathetic case with phenol wasn't worth the effort, as he would be dead in a few hours anyway. He also offered his assistance, suggesting that if he was still alive by the morning he would finish the job on his behalf. If Wilhelm decided to go through with the execution himself, Peulevé and his two friends would have had no choice but to give themselves up. However, being too drunk to care the Sergeant was content to leave the matter in Dietzsch's hands and later reported to Schiedlausky that the prisoner had been killed.
It's difficult to understate the risks that Kogon and his helpers were taking during this time, and, in particular, the fortitude and ingenuity demonstrated to keep the plan on course and protected from potential disclosure. All manner of daily problems had to be solved, as the disappearance of these men meant having to manipulate those in charge of the Arbeitstatistik, keep the orderlies and foremen in charge of prisoners’ records fed with plausible cover stories, arrange for a fellow conspirator to be on hand at the crematorium and countless other dodges; Kogon was later to describe how their ‘heads were always in several nooses at the same time’.17
Peulevé was safe for the moment, but his death from typhus would only be proved by the appearance of a corpse, which still depended on the death of his chosen double, Marcel Seigneur. The young Frenchman had battled his illness for longer than expected, though by Sunday evening it seemed that he might be weakening at last. A long and uneasy night followed, with Dietzsch unsuccessfully pleading with Yeo-Thomas and Hessel to let him quicken his death, but at 7.30 am on the morning of 9 October, Seigneur finally succumbed. The substitution was made quickly: Peulevé's number was painted onto the thigh of the corpse and the crematorium recorded his death at 8.10 am, the cause being cited as pneumonia. Peulevé was now officially Marcel Seigneur, number F-76635. By the slimmest of margins he had become the first of the three to be saved, and his gratitude was obvious in the note he sent to Kogon later that day:
Dear friends!
I can't hope to find the proper words for telling you how grateful I am to you for your magnificent achievement… I only hope that the day may come on which I can repay at least a small part of the debt I owe you.
Forever your
MARCEL SEIGNEUR.18
The ten men called to the gatehouse had already been executed on the afternoon of 5 October, Frager having been granted his request for the group to face a firing squad on the SS shooting range, rather than be hanged.19 Avallard and Evesque, recently transferred to an outside kommando, were summoned back to Buchenwald and also shot on the 7th; Rambaud followed them five days later. Kogon could not risk visiting the men in Block 46 to update the three fugitives on the situation, but they realized that it was now just a matter of time before the names Hessel and Dodkin (Yeo-Thomas’ alias) would be called for, and an execution order was expected to arrive at the end of the week. However, Chouquet, who had been ‘paired’ with Yeo-Thomas suddenly worsened and died on Friday the 13th, and the name of Dodkin entered the camp records as another typhus victim.
Only Hessel now remained, but the longer their deception continued, the greater the danger was of the plan being discovered. Although still hoping for a positive outcome, his faith began to waiver in the early part of the following week: ‘I had the feeling that the plot was so dangerous… if it had been found out, then it would have been bad for all of us. So I told Kogon “Look, you've done marvellously for my two friends, but as far as I'm concerned I'd rather try to escape.”’20 He passed a message to Kogon:
Today is Wednesday and there is a strong possibility that the execution order will arrive tomorrow (unless we are ‘lucky’ enough to get it today). Please make all the necessary arrangements for having me assigned to an outgoing shipment tomorrow… Anything else you can do for me over and above this would, of course, be of the greatest value. But I fear I must simply take my chances. It would be utter folly to wait any longer.21
But Kogon held firm and insisted that he must wait. He was proved right to do so and with the greatest of ironies, Michel Boitel died on Stéphane Hessel's twenty-seventh birthday, Friday, 20 October. Hessel sent another note the following day:
Your good instincts did not deceive you… Thanks to your care, everything has come out alright. My feelings are of a man who has been saved in the nick of time. What relief!22
It seems impossible to imagine what life must have been like for these three men during the month they spent hidden in Block 46, though Hessel points out that their emotional states were not dominated solely by fear, but rather by a perpetual state of excitement:
We had the strong feeling… that we were part of an extraordinarily dangerous plot. We were both tense and exhilarated in a way. So we had fun… I'm sure they would have agreed with me when I say that. We were not all the time thinking, ‘Is it coming?’ The only terrible moment was when Poole [Peulevé] was called… it was a terrible moment because we said, ‘What can we do? It's too late, he won't be able to escape.’ And when he finally did there was also enormous exhilaration. You must think behind it… at our youthfulness, at our war-mindedness … one felt a little heroic and at the same time terribly modest.23
Despite the plan having worked, they still had to leave the block with identities that would stand up to inspection. Kogon had additionally researched the lives of the three dead men and collected enough information to give as much personal history as possible – in Peulevé's case, he could pass easily enough under Seigneur's profession as an electrician, having his technical background to fall back on. Ding-Schuler had wanted at least one of them to remain at Buchenwald, in order to guarantee testimony when the Allies eventually arrived, but Kogon made it plain to him that if they stayed the risks were far greater for everyone concerned, and insisted that, having signed written statements in Ding-Schuler's favour, all three must be allowed to leave. His argument won and Kogon set about making arrangements with some senior contacts to have Yeo-Thomas, Peulevé and Hessel transferred as soon as possible.
Many of the kommandos outside Buchenwald were known for brutally working their prisoners to death either in factories, quarries or on construction projects. Even so, there was a slightly better chance of escape on the outside and each man would have to take whatever chances came his way. It had been agreed that Yeo-Thomas would be the last to leave and Kogon managed to arrange for the other two to take the next transport, fittingly scheduled for Hallowe'en. Supplied with what clothing and food could be mustered, Peulevé and Hessel bade farewell to Yeo-Thomas, all three promising to meet again after the war and do what they could to bring justice for their murdered comrades. Slipping away quietly, they were relieved to be outside Block 46 for the first time in over a month but were careful to keep their heads down to avoid being recognized. The weather was atrocious, however, and hardly anyone took notice of them as they walked through the wind and rain to the main gate, joining the other men boarding the trucks for Schönebeck.