The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World

In Chapter 1, Freedland focuses on Walter’s childhood. He was a precociously clever child who excelled at reading, mathematics, and languages. Although he was raised Jewish by religious grandparents, Walter questioned Judaism and its religious norms from an early age. Freedland writes that—though forbidden in Orthodox Judaism—Walter tried pork for the first time as a teenager while “still wearing tzitzit, the traditional fringed vest of the devout Jewish male” (13). When divine intervention did not come in the form of a lightning bolt, Walter broke from religion and became an atheist at the age of 11. At school, he chose to identify as Czechoslovak rather than Jewish. Walter’s life changed in 1939 when the Catholic priest Father Jozef Tiso took over Slovakia. An ally of Adolf Hitler, Tiso allowed Nazism to flourish in the country. He enacted a series of antisemitic policies.

Walter and Ilona fled to the small town of Trnava in the countryside. Even in the countryside, they could not outrun the government’s antisemitic policies. Authorities banished Jewish students from schools and barred them from learning alone. Authorities forced Jewish students to turn in all their books. Walter dutifully surrendered his textbooks, but his friend Erwin Eisler did not. Erwin kept one inorganic chemistry textbook. Walter and Erwin read the book, “teaching themselves in secret the knowledge their country was determined to deny them” (16).

Walter not only taught himself, but he also began tutoring others while he was still a teenager. When he was 15 years old, he tutored a 13-year-old girl named Gerta Sidonová (who would later become his first wife). Gerta fell in love with Walter, a love that persisted through the Holocaust. Walter, however, gave her mixed signals. As one example, Walter abandoned her on a date when he saw that she was wearing a hat with pom-poms, which he found too childish.

Tiso’s government also required any Jewish person over the age of six to wear a yellow Star of David on their outer clothes. Freedland notes that Walter did not rebel against any of the government rules until February 1942, when he received a letter ordering him to report for resettlement. Walter refused to comply because “he had been born in Slovakia; Slovak was his native tongue. He was a Slovak. He would not be picked up and thrown out like a piece of garbage, leaving his mother defenseless” (20). Walter planned to escape to England, where he would “join the Czechoslovak army in exile” (20). Walter hoped to travel to the Hungarian border. Hungary seemed safer than Slovakia since the country was not yet “loading Jews onto trains sending them who knew where” (23).

Walter made it to Hungary, where he met with contacts in Hungary’s underground socialist movement. They tried to secure fake documents for Walter so that he could work but were unable to do so. They encouraged Walter to head back to Trnava, where contacts would have false papers for him. With these papers, he could then resume his original escape plan.

On his return to Slovakia, two Hungarian border guards caught and beat Walter. Walter tried to tell the men that he was from Slovakia and headed to Budapest for work. Unfortunately, the men found his train ticket and accused him of being a spy. They tortured Walter for several hours, trying to discover his accomplice. Walter did not crack, resulting in the men believing Walter’s story. The Hungarian men dropped Walter off at the Slovak border, where Slovak border guards found him. These guards transferred Walter to a camp in Nováky, Slovakia. He began plotting his escape.

Walter did not find Nováky’s defenses adequate. He thought he could easily escape, but he wanted to have a plan and an accomplice. Walter turned to Josef Knapp, who also dreamed of escape, for an accomplice. The two escaped. Following their plan, they split up. Josef went to a village where he could hide with friends. Walter went to the home of Josef’s girlfriend, Zuzka. Zuzka would join Josef, and then Josef would send Walter money and word enabling him to head back to Trnava. Zuzka left to find Josef, but Josef never followed through. He betrayed Walter. This betrayal sparked in Walter a sense of paranoia, a personality trait that proved difficult for the people in Walter’s life. This mistrust was exacerbated by further betrayals that Walter both experienced and witnessed during his time at Nováky and Majdanek. This growing inability to trust others likely saved his life at Auschwitz, although it also nearly ruined him at several points in his life post-war (he lost several jobs due to his paranoia).

Walter decided to travel to Trnava on his own. Unfortunately, he made a catastrophic error. He went to a milk bar, where he was caught by a policeman. The policeman told Walter that he gave himself away by wearing two pairs of socks on a hot summer day (as described in Part 3, Walter later learned that he broke one of the cardinal rules for escapology taught to him by Dmitri Volkov, a Russian prisoner of war who mentored Walter on his escape). Walter also found out that there was a warrant out for his arrest. The policeman handed Walter over to the Hlinka (Czechoslovak militia) guards, who returned Walter to Nováky. Walter was once again a prisoner.

Upon Walter’s return to Nováky, the Hlinka guards placed Walter in a special cell and decided to put him on the next transport. Hlinka guards with guns escorted Walter to the railway platform. They did not want Walter to escape again. Their parting words to Walter were, “Try to escape again and you’re a dead duck” (31). Walter did not yet realize that their words were a true warning.

The train ride was a horrific and degrading experience. Jewish people, including the elderly and parents with children, were all crammed together. Initially, there was comradery among the other human cargo (this is the term Freedland uses to highlight the fact that the Jewish people were kept in such deplorable conditions). They even celebrated the recent marriage of a couple. Conditions soon deteriorated. People ran out of food and water. Thirst and hunger gnawed at everyone. They were unable to empty the bathroom bucket, so the smell also worsened. Fights broke out. At some point during the journey, the guards transitioned from Hlinka to SS officers.

In this section, Walter does not yet realize the extent of Nazi Germany’s web of lies. Several of his fellow deportees received letters from previously deported relatives supposedly assuring family members of their safety. Given the positive tone of these letters, most of the deportees believed they were truly just being resettled elsewhere. Yet several mentioned small inconsistencies, including asking after friends and relatives who were dead. As the text later reveals, these letters were part of the Nazis’ scheme to imprison and murder Jewish people. The Nazis forced Jewish arrivals to write these letters before they murdered them in the gas chambers. Walter did not yet pay attention to tales of inconsistencies or errors. Freedland notes that “he was preoccupied staring out of the opening that passed for a window, watching the landscape as it went by. He was trying to memorise the route” (33).

At one stop, Walter asked the train’s conductor to refill the water tanks since passengers had run out of water hours ago. Children complained of thirst. Their lips started to chap, and some grew lightheaded. The conductor refused, stating, “I’m not going to get myself shot for you bastards” (34). This moment proved unforgettable for Walter. For the first time, he realized that his people were being ignored and rejected by the outside world.

Despite the conditions, Walter tried to plot an escape, which he found difficult, as the train’s path confused him. When the train finally stopped after three days, the people onboard initially thought their ordeal was over and that “wherever they had arrived, it had to be better than what they had just endured” (35). However, their inhumane treatment was not over. The SS officers immediately began separating men fit to work (ages 15-50) from everyone else, and these orders were met with confusion. Tiso’s government promised that families would be kept together (and this was in fact the reason the couple on the train married). The people onboard hoped this was not a real separation but just for the purposes of organizing the group, but they were again wrong. The train carrying the elderly, women, and children departed the station, leaving the men behind.

The SS officers ordered the men to put their suitcases on a waiting truck, stating that their belongs would later be returned. Walter did not trust the SS officers, so he kept his backpack. The men began to march toward Majdanek, which was a Konzentrationslager, or concentration camp.

Upon arrival at Majdanek, the SS officers began processing Walter and the other men from the train. This was a dehumanizing ordeal, as the officers removed the prisoners’ individual identifiers, such as luggage, hair, and clothes.

As Walter endured this, he realized he knew many of the prisoners, who previously seemed like “shadows from the underworld” (39). They were all fellow Jewish people, such as Erwin Eisler and Walter’s brother Sammy. Walter also realized that the Kapos—prisoners who were forced to supervise the activities of other prisoners in the camp and who were distinguished by the fact that they wore a green triangle on the outside of their shirts—straddled “a grey zone between captives and captors” (40). They represented the brutal enforcement branch within the concentration camps. Walter tried to speak with Sammy, but the Kapos started beating them, preventing the two brothers from speaking. Walter never saw Sammy again. Walter describes how the memory of their brief salute to one another, “each raising their arm to the other, brother to brother” (41), stayed with him forever.

Walter realized that work was life in the concentration camp. The inability to work due to dysentery, malnutrition, or other diseases meant death. Walter worked in construction inside the camp. SS officers brutally beat him and other prisoners for not working fast enough. Walter thought about escape, but he realized that escape while working construction was impossible. He realized that “breaking free from Majdanek would require a much greater act of imagination than his escape from Nováky” (44).

The Kapos asked for volunteers for farm work. Walter thought this might present an easier opportunity for escape, so he volunteered. A fellow inmate warned Walter that he was making a grave mistake and that his new destination was far worse than Majdanek. Walter did not listen. He once again boarded a train to an unknown destination. On the train, he looked for a new co-conspirator. Josef Erdelyi, a veteran of Nováky and boyfriend of Walter’s high school friend, became his collaborator. They thought about different ways to escape from the train, but none were viable. After another horrific train ride with deplorable and inhumane conditions, the train finally stopped on June 30, 1942. Walter was now in Auschwitz.