Escape From Hell: The True Story of the Auschwitz Protocol

By Alfréd Wetzler

A shocking account of Nazi genocide and the inhuman conditions in Auschwitz, but equally shocking is the initial disbelief with which the revelations were met.

“Alfred Wetzler was a true hero. His escape from Auschwitz, and the report he helped compile, telling for the first time the truth about the camp as a place of mass murder, led directly to saving the lives of 120,000 Jews…. No other single act in the Second World War saved so many Jews from the fate that Hitler and the SS had determined for them.”—Sir Martin Gilbert

Together with another young Slovak Jew Rudolf Vrba, both deported in 1942, the author succeeded in escaping from the notorious death camp in the spring of 1944. There were some very few successful escapes from Auschwitz during the war, but it was these two who smuggled out the damning evidence – a ground plan of the camp, constructional details of the gas chambers and crematoriums and, most convincingly, a label from a canister of Cyclone gas.

The book is cast in the form of a novel to allow information not personally collected by the two fugitives but provided for them by a handful of reliable friends, to be included. Nothing, however, has been invented.

From the Introduction by Dr. Robert Rozett
Wetzler is a master at evoking the universe of Auschwitz, and especially, his and Vrba's harrowing flight to Slovakia. The day-by-day account of the tremendous difficulties the pair faced after the Nazis had called off their search of the camp and its surroundings is both riveting and heart wrenching. [...] Shining vibrantly through the pages of the memoir are the tenacity and valor of two young men, who sought to inform the world about the greatest outrage ever committed by humans against their fellow humans.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Release date: Apr 1, 2007
• ISBN: 9781789209433

Alfréd Wetzler

Alfréd Wetzler (1918–1988) was one of the two inmates of Auschwitz who managed to escape from the death camp using an ingenious scheme to provide the first documentary evidence of the operations at Auschwitz. Once he returned to Slovakia, he joined the national partisan movement under the name of Jozef Lanik. The original book (written in Slovakian) was published under this pseudonym.

Book preview

Introduction

Escape from Hell, Alfred Wetzler’s personal story, straddles the line between memoir and literature, in many ways like Eli Wiesel’s much heralded Night. Like Night it evokes reality powerfully and poignantly, even if at times it adheres less strictly to the form of a conventional historical narrative. Yet the heart of the story is based on historical fact, not fiction.

Unlike most memoirs, which are written in the first person, this book is written in the third person. The two main protagonists of the escape Alfred Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba (Walter Rosenberg) are referred to as Karol and Val, respectively. They are written about like characters in a reportage or novel albeit not with distance, but with intimacy.

Throughout the book Wetzler includes a great deal of dialogue, which is considered problematic in a memoir, since rarely can a witness remember the exact words that were said at the time. Moreover, Wetzler includes scenes and dialogue from situations that he did not directly witness. For example, he reconstructs events among the staff members at the heart of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, while he and Vrba were hiding and waiting to begin making their way to Slovakia. Wetzler obviously did not hear what was said or observe the frenzied reactions of the camp staff in their offices. At best he could have learned of these things after the war from survivors, or he may have used his knowledge of the men involved to fill in the gaps. The descriptions of several scenes in the book differ from those previously presented in the scholarly literature, in particular, Wetzler’s account of the compilation of the report about Auschwitz and the people present when he and Vrba recounted their information.

Still, many people Wetzler mentions and scenes he relates correspond very closely to the known historical record. Wetzler writes about people like the notorious physicians Mengele, Clauberg, Thilo, Wirths and Schumann. He mentions Karl Prufer, chief engineer of Topf and Sons (the makers of the gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz Birkenau), as well as the brutal SS Hauptscharführer Otto Moll, chief of the crematoria at Birkenau. Frequently he refers to the cruel Johann Schwarzhuber, who he calls Hans, the commander of Birkenau. At the other end of the spectrum he writes about Mala Zimetbaum, a member of the Auschwitz resistance who was hanged. Many aspects of the description of his and Vrba’s escape not only ring true, they reverberate. The first stage of the escape itself, the secreting of the pair under a woodpile on the outer perimeter of the camp, the spreading of Russian tobacco previously soaked in gasoline to deter the guard-dogs from discovering the two men, and the three day wait until the Nazis called off their manhunt, all match other accounts. By describing the cramped space in which they hid and the tension they felt until they were able to begin their journey to Slovakia, Wetzler draws the reader close to what the men must have experienced, thought and felt.

Wetzler is a master at evoking the universe of Auschwitz, especially his and Vrba’s harrowing flight to Slovakia. The day-by-day account of the tremendous difficulties the pair faced after the Nazis had called off their search of the camp and its surroundings is both riveting and heart wrenching. Wetzler makes it clear that alone, neither man would have made it to Slovakia, but together, each leaning on the other, they were able to attain their goal. The timely help they received from Poles and Slovaks, who endangered themselves to help, cannot cancel out the barbarism the pair faced in Auschwitz-Birkenau or the desperate risk of their escape, but Wetzler’s descriptions of aid remind readers that even in the worst of times and situations, a handful of righteous people emerged.

Wetzler and Vrba’s report, later appended by the information provided by two additional escapees, Czeslaw Mordowicz and Arnost Rosin, has come to be known as the Auschwitz Protocols. Wetzler and Vrba, as well as the members of the Auschwitz-Birkenau underground who helped arrange their escape and who provided them with many of the details about the camp, hoped that once the report about the mass systematic murder and inhuman regime at Auschwitz-Birkenau was made public, the Allies would intervene to destroy the machinery of death. Those like the intrepid Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandel of the semi-underground rescue organization, the Working Group, who received the report in Slovakia and forwarded the information it contained to the ‘free world’, also believed the protocols would lead to immediate action to destroy the murder apparatus. But this did not happen.

Nevertheless the Auschwitz Protocols, which reached the ‘free world’ through various paths, did make a considerable impression. Arriving in Žilina on 25 April, 1944, some 18 days after the start of their escape, Wetzler and Vrba met with Ervin Steiner a representative of the Slovak Jewish leadership. Immediately thereafter Steiner contacted Oscar Krasnansky of the Bratislava based Jewish Center, the Slovak Jewish Council. Krasnansky managed to reach Žilina and at Steiner’s house Wetzler and Vrba told the Jewish leaders about Auschwitz, moving them profoundly. Separately, Wetzler and Vrba then wrote up their accounts, which were combined in a 60 page document a few days later. It was copied several times over, translated from Slovak to German and Hungarian, and distributed to members of the Slovak Jewish Council, the Papal Nuncio in Slovakia, Monsignor Giuseppe Burzio (who then sent it to the Vatican), and to the Budapest Relief and Rescue Committee. The last was particularly important because the report contained information about preparations in Auschwitz-Birkenau for the imminent arrival and slaughter of Hungarian Jewry. The Relief and Rescue Committee, which had just begun negotiations with the SS about rescuing Hungarian Jews, apparently did not widely disseminate the information contained in the protocols. Even today, their actions concerning the report remain a matter of controversy among scholars, survivors and lay people.

Rabbi Weissmandel sent out an abbreviated version of the report to his contacts in Switzerland, early in May, but the information did not arrive. On 16 May, just after the deportations from Hungary began, he tried again, adding a plea to bomb the rail lines leading to Auschwitz-Birkenau. This time, Recha and Isaac Sternbuch of the Swiss-based Vaad Hahatzalah received it and began its dissemination. The full text of the protocols, delivered by a courier dispatched by Weissmandel’s Working Group, reached Switzerland only on 13 June, 1944. It was delivered into the hands of the representative of the Czechoslovak Government in Exile, Dr Jaromir Kopecky. Gerhard Riegner of the World Jewish Congress then sent it to allied representatives in Bern:Elizabeth Wiskemann of the British legation, Allen Dulles head of U.S. intelligence in Switzerland and Roswell McClelland of the American legation. On 18 June, the BBC broadcast segments of the report. In Switzerland itself, a press campaign ensued, urging that aid be given to Jews endangered by the Nazi occupation.

The results of all of this activity are not easy to pin down. Rescue initiatives were already underway in Hungary when the protocols reached the ‘free world’, yet it is quite likely that the report gave additional impetus to those efforts. The report probably had much to do with the appeal of 30 June, 1944, to the Hungarian Regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy, by the King of Sweden, Gustav, to save the remaining Jews of Hungary. This appeal was likely to have played an important role in Horthy’s decision to stop the deportations from Hungary and offer to allow several thousand Jews to leave Hungary. The Horthy Offer, as it is known, in turn played a central role in subsequent rescue activities in Hungary. The information contained in the protocols almost certainly spurred on the International Committee of the Red Cross, which, on 4 July, 1944, made a written protest about Hungarian crimes against Hungarian Jewry and offered to supervise the distribution of food and medicine to the deportees. Horthy responded to their letter by making the International Red Cross responsible for the welfare of the remaining Jews of Budapest, which in turn became a linchpin in further rescue efforts.

The request first made by Rabbi Weissmandel to bomb Auschwitz-Birkenau and the rail lines leading to it, did not fall on deaf ears. Both Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt ordered that the matter be explored, but for purposes of rescue neither the camp nor the rail line was ever bombed. Although the issue is sensitive and tortuous, it is important to understand that the bombing was being considered around the time of the Normandy landings, when all of the effort of the Western Allies was focused intensely on the largest and most complicated military operation ever carried out up to that time. The bombing of the camp’s murder facilities was deemed very problematic, and given the Allies’ stated policy that nothing should detract from the war effort and that the best way to help the Jews was to win the war, the mere existence of difficulties in what was considered to be a non-military issue most likely precluded efforts to try to solve them. What remains clear, however, is that the Allies’ desire to rescue Jews was never commensurate to the Nazis’ desire to murder them. It is equally clear that the Auschwitz Protocols made an indelible impression on those who read them and contributed to the rescue of many thousands of Jews, especially in Budapest.

Wetzler’s memoir, evoking the suffering, death and life in the shadow of the camp, allows readers to approach the unprecedented horror that was Auschwitz-Birkenau. His writing casts light on the desperate courage of the members of the underground, making it plain for all to see. Shining vibrantly through the pages of the memoir is the tenacity and valor of two young men, who sought to inform the world about the greatest outrage ever committed by humans against their fellow humans. The mixed consequences of their bloodcurdling message demonstrate the complex realities of a world in the throes of a cataclysmic war and the Holocaust, and the fundamental powerlessness of the Jews to stop the carnage.

Robert Rozett

Director of the Yad Vashem Libraries

Jerusalem 2006

Chapter 1

Just for Work

Easter, April 1942

One thousand nine hundred and forty-two according to the Gregorian calendar, five thousand seven hundred and two according to the Jewish calendar, a few million years according to the Earth and space scientists.

The sun is shining from a blue sky, a strong intoxicating scent is rising from the furrows. The earth is fragrant, the grass is fragrant. Now and then a light breeze rustles reassuringly. It is saturated with the hot smell of soil, grass, resin and the flowering trees.

Everywhere else the sun is shining from a blue sky, except here, where it is dark. Darkness has entered into the eyes and souls of hundreds of people who are standing in a column, listening to a speech they had not heard before, to words that would rob them of their native piece of sky, their fields and meadows, the smell of their earth, their farmsteads, their wives, their sisters, their children, their mothers, their grandmothers and their grandfathers.

‘… you are leaving for work’ – the deputy commandant of the Sered camp continues, a bent man with awkward movements and purple veins under his watery eyes – ‘and you’ll find that everything’s ready for you there. No need for any panic. After all, we are treating you decently, as is only proper, and it’ll be the same when you get there. Nothing to be afraid of. Every one of you will do his own thing – a cobbler will mend shoes, a doctor will treat patients, everybody will work in his own field. For your work you’ll be given board and lodging, as well as pay so you can buy yourself whatever you may need. And you’ll be happily together there. You’ll do your labour stint and in six months, or at the latest in a year, you’ll be going back home.’ His words sound unconvincing, there is something like ill-concealed derision in them. ‘I hope this is clear to you. You’re in good health, aren’t you? So don’t be afraid of work! Now and again one of us will come and visit you to see how you’re doing …’

A Škoda car pulls up at the main gate. Above its right headlight is a two-barred white cross on a blue background. It is honking continually.

The double-bent man quickly glances towards the gate and hurriedly repeats that neither he nor anyone else has anything against them. Then he turns to the men of the Hlinka Guard. There are eighteen of them, in black uniforms and polished jackboots, young men of unmilitary bearing, looking downright ridiculous as they try to stand to attention. You can’t hear what he says to them.

A moment later they run across to the people.

‘Left turn! By the left, quick march!’ they yell.

The air fills with shouting and cursing. The Hlinka Guards run about, fiercely gesticulating. In their shouts, their commands and movements there is unconcealed joy: they are shouting orders, they are in charge, and with their commands they have got hundreds of people moving. They are intoxicated with a sense of power as if with drink.

A movement runs through the crowd of Jews; they bend down, quickly take up their luggage, the column moves off wearily. In their hands, on their shoulders or on their backs there is the oddest collection of baggage – big and small cases of all colours, leather and vulcanite cases, rucksacks, attaché cases and bags tied up with straps and string.

‘Get a move on’, the Hlinka Guards shout and the human crowd winds its way across fields and meadows.

‘Karol, isn’t this rather heavy?’ the teacher Wagner asks his former pupil. Wagner is an elderly person, in his fifties, but he tries to march firmly, upright and to preserve some dignity and at least an appearance of calm even in these circumstances.

‘Karol …’

‘It’s heavy,’ Karol replies. He is a short, lithe, lively young man with a fine down on his trusting face. ‘It’s heavy, but I’ll manage.’

He speaks as convincingly as he can. He has no baggage of his own, so he is helping his teacher to carry his heavy cane suitcase. They are almost at the end of the column. Karol is afraid to change his load from one hand to the other, he is afraid of stopping; in front you can do that, but not at the back. The Guards are waving their truncheons, running about, yelling.

‘Get on with it! Faster! Look lively!’

‘Step out! You’ll have plenty of time to sit once you get there!’

Has their village been flooded or burnt down so that everybody is fleeing with whatever they were able to pick up in a hurry, to escape disaster? No, this is a different kind of crowd, with shouting behind it and all around it.

‘Come on, get a move on! You’ll be better off there than here.’

They walk on for three kilometres, then they stop by the railway line, a good way beyond the station. They drop their baggage on the ground, they sit down on it, they take off sweaters, pullovers, jackets, the older men also remove winter coats. The long column is irritable, but here and there some encouraging words are heard. Karol is sitting by his teacher Wagner on his wicker case. The teacher sits bolt upright, he breathes heavily, wheezing a little, and his high forehead glistens with sweat; Karol is rubbing his bruised hands.

Ahead of the crowd, over to the right, stands a long goods train, its trucks open on both sides. Over to the left, by the station building, stand a few railwaymen, three or four gendarmes, leaning against the railing, smoking, drinking beer, and gazing sadly on the crowd. Suddenly some Hlinka Guards come running out of the waiting room. They surround the crowd, yelling and swearing. Two civilians with the double-barred cross on their sleeves shout from the distance:

‘On your feet! Get up!’

The crowd gets to their feet and into formation.

‘Forty at a time – is that clear? You’ll be called, each of you. Anyone falling short of forty or exceeding forty gets one across his mug!’

They call out the names, they separate the first forty and take them to the first truck. The forty march up a broad ramp into the truck. Forty, and another forty.

‘Come along, Laco, you’re not going to discover anything,’ Karol says to his friend and once more picks up the wicker case. Laco, twenty years old, an only son, is a few months younger than Karol. He is a little confused and frightened, he is looking about him, then he picks up his suitcase and sack and follows the teacher and Karol to the last truck. On its right-hand corner there is a newly painted large numeral – XVI. On its left corner are some old labels, now covered up.

‘Oi, what are you doing buggering about there?’ a Guard yells at Karol. ‘Just wondering where you are taking us for free.’

‘Shut your trap, you lousy whipper-snapper!’

At the last truck, too, they call out people’s numbers, names and surnames, for the third time in the same order, and push them into the waggon. Three Hlinka Guards are fussing over the list. Someone had just run out of the truck, shouting ‘Present’.

‘Bastards! Out! Again!’

‘Six hundred and one …’

‘Here!’

‘Six hundred and two …’

‘Here!’

‘Six hundred and three …’

‘Yes.’

‘No Yes, you arsehole. You call out Here.’ ‘Six hundred and three …’

‘Here!’

‘Shit!’

‘Beg pardon?’

‘Six hundred and thirty-four!’ ‘That’s me, Doctor Vojtĕch Zimmer …’

The Guardsman scowls at him, his face turns red, but no words come out. With his pencil he points at the door. Dr Zimmer steps on the boarding ramp last. On his sleeve he has a white armband with a red cross. A gendarme helps him into the truck, then hands him a bucket of water. Zimmer takes it carefully, making sure not a drop is spilled.

The floor of the truck is newly scrubbed, there is a smell of excrement, hay, horses, ammonia and soda water.

‘The farm is all loaded up. Only the hay is missing,’ someone says by the door.

The doors on the right side of the trucks are noisily shut, padlocks are hung on them and for a while they struggle with them. Across the front door they put an iron bar. Everyone rushes to the front opening.

‘Hey, they’re looking for some Laco. His dad’s outside.’

Laco can’t push his way through to the front, he only raises his hand above his head. His father flings a twisted and corded-up blanket into the truck. ‘Laco, you stay with Karol, you look after each other, share everything, keep together. Mum didn’t want to come, she was afraid …’

‘No more speeches! Stand clear of the train!’

Karol and Laco stand on tiptoe, supporting themselves on the backs of those in front of them, but they don’t see anything. After a while they go angrily and sadly back to the corner which they had bagged for themselves and their teacher. Laco undoes the blanket and finds in it two packets of triangular cheese, two tins of canned food and some ginger biscuits.

‘Aren’t you hungry, Karol? I’ve some meat too, some Easter meat.’ ‘Don’t worry, we won’t let it spoil.’

Laco puts everything in his duffle bag, folds the blanket and puts it on the floor. ‘Why not sit down?’ he says to the teacher and the teacher sits down. Laco then takes hold of Karol’s hand and drags him to the front opening. They manage to squeeze through to a spot from where they can see at least a narrow slice of life out there in the sun. By the station building and along the stores stands a huge multitude of people, getting bigger by the minute. There are many festively dressed women in starched peasant skirts. It is a holiday and they have hastened here from church and from their homes; each is holding a parcel in her arms. They are all nodding their heads, waving handkerchiefs and cloths, blowing kisses, wringing their hands. Those in the truck, pressed against the iron bar and groaning under the pressure of those behind them, call out:

‘See you soon! See you soon, dears!’

See you soon … See their parents, their brothers and sisters, their girlfriends and boyfriends, known and unknown. All those standing out there, waiting for the moment of parting. See you soon – consoling those outside and themselves.

From behind the last warehouse a group of old people appears, along with children, and boldly take up position in front. On the left side of their jackets they are wearing yellow six-pointed stars. After a while they wave to the rail trucks, shyly, with hands half-raised.

‘Let’s go … that’s enough for me,’ whispers Laco. And louder he adds: ‘These people are turning this into a spectacle – as if we were going to cross the Atlantic.’

They drag themselves back to their corner and sit down on the blanket next to the teacher. Karol draws his knees up to his chin, supports himself on them with his elbows and buries his face in his hands. Why is he here? Why not in the street he has known for twenty years? Irenka, Irenka my love, tell me why, why? Everything is so confused.

He sits up, they all sit up – from outside comes the shrill sound of a whistle.

The crowds that had been standing by the station and the warehouses begin to run towards the train.

‘Stop them! Stop them, you incompetents!’ someone shouts angrily outside.

The Guardsmen quickly form a line, a wall of rifles held in front of them, they stop the people and yell, but the onslaught is too fierce and a lot of women and children get as far as the trucks.

‘Stand clear of the train, you lousy vermin!’

Parcel after parcel lands in the truck: medallions, kerchiefs, purses, photographs.

‘See you soon! All the best! Write home!’

Three Guardsmen, kicking and using their rifle-butts, force their way through to truck XVI. From somewhere on the side a gendarme joins them, shouting at the people, ‘Do show some sense, after all …’ and inconspicuously he throws a few packets of cigarettes into the waggon. One of the Guardsmen is fencing with his bayonet fixed, another just yells and a third takes up position by the door in order to slide it shut.

‘Ask them where we are off to,’ the teacher Wagner calls out from his corner. ‘Surely they can tell us now.’

The door of truck XVI is noisily shut. The clank of a padlock, a click and the rattling of the door. The ringing of the metal is painful to the ears.

‘Where are we going to?’ calls out a shrill voice.

‘You’re going somewhere to work, bloody hell. And be quiet now. So you want to shit yourself with fright?’ Karol, Laco and the teacher are crouching in the corner. The teacher would like to say something encouraging, something wise, but he can’t manage it: all that he has seen and heard while they were being driven to the station and all that he is now seeing and hearing in the train fails to make sense; it defies logic and custom. Laco silently gazes at Karol, his big inquisitive eyes are sad and full of uncertainty. Karol is covering his eyes, there is hammering behind his temples, he is breathing heavily and he is blocking his ears with his thumbs.

… work and toil till you are sore / you have done it all before. Yes, it all started rather oddly: some Blackshirts ran out into the street, they all had to go back indoors, there were orders, instructions, prohibitions, lists, labels, penalties … but that was not really the beginning, surely he had lived before … Yes, that was a beautiful morning, he had carefully covered his old textbooks in new blue paper, he had walked along breathing deeply, filling his chest, straightening up, he would have liked to be a head taller … That morning he had, for the first time, gone to the first form of the grammar school. The headmaster had addressed them, ceremoniously and earnestly as though they were adults; a significant step in your lives, if you work hard you will, after eight years, be able to go in to higher education (and all the one hundred and ten took this literally) you’ll be able to go to university, you’ll become professors, doctors … It was in his fifth year, they’d been in Brno for an athletics event … he took the same street for one more year to the same big, severe building … then his father said: he couldn’t manage any longer, that he’d have to go to work, and so he went to work. He began in a timber store. Oh what a cold winter that was, the planks were like ice, but he held out. With his first wages he had run straight home, with a chuckle he’d flung the envelope with the money on the table, he’d boasted in front of his brothers, he’d waved the envelope with the money under their noses. But that wasn’t all, some of his first earnings they’d kept back, and his mother, saddened, had given him ten crowns, so now, he told his brothers laughingly, you can have some money for the cinema; and they’d laughed with him, teased him about why he didn’t get married, they’d seen him in the park with Irenka. Yes, Irenka, Karolko, they’d thought up names for each other but in the end they came back to the original ones. For hours on end they’d walked together in the park, not saying a lot, rather thinking how they could bring their faces closer together. Then came the first kiss, but they didn’t promise one another anything, only not to go out with another girl, nor you either … and then they would meet secretly, she’d write letters to him; not long ago she’d written her last letter and given him her last kiss, everything had ended so suddenly, or not ended really, only here in this truck. What an invention a railway truck was!

There’s a war on and it’s spring and throughout the world there are good people about. They were off to work. Everything would be ready for them there: accommodation, food, everything. He’ll be with his brothers, perhaps not straight away, but he’ll find them all right, and living together with them would be good. And he’ll meet other people as well. After all, he has worked before, done heavy work, work doesn’t frighten him any longer. He is young, in good health, he’ll make money, somehow he’ll keep himself. Plenty of people are at work all over the world, some even send a lot of money home. The war won’t go on forever. Maybe the Guardsmen had lied to them. Maybe they’ll be there more than six months or a year, but after the war he’ll surely come home, along with his brothers. That’s what he’d solemnly promised his mother. And if things there were very bad, then he’d run away. Run away … But where to? To whom? Home, of course, to his native town. Where else? If things were going to be very bad, he’d run away home.

But where are they going to? Where are they being taken? Why haven’t they been told? Where will he be working? In a factory? On the roads? In the mines? Or as a bricklayer? Maybe in a timber yard. What will it be like? And how are they going to house them all? And why were they transporting them in goods waggons? And why did they lock the waggons if they were taking them to work? No doubt they take a lot of people there and they are afraid they might run away on the journey. There’ll be some reason.

‘Ready!’

There was a note of relief in that voice, as though the speaker was glad he’d at last got rid of this unpleasant task.

A long and piercing whistle. In front the engine is puffing and hissing, the truck jerks forward and back, and the train is moving. The people in the truck fall silent for a moment and turn rigid.

‘Let me go!’

‘Hang on, I’ll open the door.’

There is shoving and pushing, a confusion of voices and a rush to the little window and to the long narrow crack between the side of the truck and the door behind where, people known and unknown slip by, things known and unknown of the small town of Sered.

‘Look, just look at those kids, poor things, running alongside the train! Waving and shouting something. Look at them running!’

Because they all want to see, no one actually sees. A moment later the train turns into a bend, then into another, and by the time the track has straightened out, a gentle undulation of a ploughed field conceals the station and the town.

The Jews tear themselves away from the door and settle down. Through the barred window comes the weak light of the April sun. The wheels click in a regular rhythm on the rail joints.

Karol sits thoughtfully in his corner. His thoughts are in turmoil: one interweaves with another, incomplete thoughts die away, making room for new ones, equally confused ones, uncertain and worrying ones. Every click of the wheels on the rails hits the brain, disturbs his chaotic thoughts and brings up fresh ones. At times he is back home in his street, he knows all the people there – who knows what they are up to right now? At times he is in his parents’ house, his last few days with his mum and dad, at times he is with Irenka, parting, and then they met five more times, not knowing if this was their last time together, their last kiss, her last letter, thank you for it, and at times he is at the end of this incomprehensible journey, far away in a strange world that he is unable to picture in detail.

My good, infinitely good mother. What’s she doing now? Probably sitting, as she was at the moment when they picked me up – sitting there, crying, her prayer-book in her lap, at the table on which stands a mug of white coffee and some unfinished matzos. The rooms are in a muddle. Father is standing by the corded-up baggage, manfully biting back his tears. But mother, that good and infinitely gentle mother, is unable to control herself. What would she be doing at this moment? Surely still sitting there, sad and suffering, waiting for more shouts and noisy