It is October 14th and yesterday's plan to escape has been put back a day. Feldhendler and Pechersky called off the escape because, to everyone's shock and surprise, a train full of SS guards has arrived. No one is sure why, and this has scared us and made our escape attempt much more difficult. The guards are still here today, but the secret of our plan will not stay secret for much longer on the lips of so many people. Either we escape, or the secret does.
I am in my workshop making bracelets when I receive news that the murders in Camp II have been successful. My heart leaps and starts to quicken. We are past the point of no return now. If the guards find out what we have done we will all be killed. I wiggle my toes inside my shoe and I can feel my wife's necklace. I am relieved to find that I still have it.
Some of the Jews are exchanging knowing winks in the yard. Secret signs that mean we share a common goal and we are ready to escape from this painful and terror-filled existence.
The whistle blows fifteen minutes before roll-call and again when it is time for roll-call to begin, and I shut my eyes and hope that it is Gideon in a guard's uniform who has blown it, not an SS guard.
Many of the Jews who are gathering in the yard for roll-call are unaware of Feldhendler’s plan to escape, and I hope against hope that they will be able to adapt swiftly to the situation as it changes. But who knows. Many of them are weak from illness and malnutrition, and may not even know what day of the week it is. There is no doubt that many people will be killed today.
I walk across the yard and fall into line with the rest of the Jews. I look nervously up to the front of the line. Ilan stands there in a Kapo’s uniform with a whistle in his hand and my heart soars. Thank God; the plan is working so far.
The Kapo are Jews who are appointed by the SS Guards to carry out their orders. Many Kapo are hated by the other Jews; they are viewed as traitors, but I know that those recruited as Kapo were given a fierce choice. Work for the SS Guards and carry out their tortuous orders against their fellow men, or die.
I steal a glance up to the watchtower where the Blackies look down over the whole camp. They seem relaxed and this reassures me that the murders in Camp II have been carried out successfully.
In my trouser pocket a kitchen knife burns a hole against my leg. It almost feels like it has an electric current passing through it as my leg is almost tingling with the sensation of it’s existence.
There is a heated discussion at the front of the line. Another Polish Kapo is shouting at Gideon, I think he is saying that the whistle has been blown too early, and that now they will be punished. Gideon pulls a knife and thrusts it into the belly of the shouting man.
And now it is impossible for there to be an orderly march to the gate. Gideon’s choice was to let the man shout at him and thus attract the attention of the other guards, or silence him and thus reveal the plan to the lines of assembled Jews that stand here at roll-call.
He has chosen the lesser of two evils.
A machine gun opens fire behind us, and this is the beginning of the chaos.
Erich Bauer is firing into the line of Jews, knocking them flat with relentless bullets. Everyone scatters, in every direction. Hundreds start to surge for the main gate. This is no orderly march. This is a situation that is becoming more nightmarish and difficult to read with every passing second.
I follow the crowd towards the main gate. I am surrounded by the screaming and shouting of my comrades.
More guns open fire on us. The man running alongside me falls as he is shot in the knee and I cannot help but think that had he not been standing there then the bullet would have hit me; securing my fate for I would not be able to run, as he is unable to now, and he will die. I watch him fall, and he sends out an arm towards me before his face hits the mud.
I see a gang of Jews running behind the carpenters shop.
I look up and see the Blackies in the tower, silhouetted against the cruel cold grey sky. They are shooting at us with their Mausers.
The surging crowd knocks over a Ukrainian guard on his bicycle and he shouts at them ‘Did you not hear the whistle you sons of bitches?’
Explosions, in the south field behind the carpenter’s shop. The Jews that had escaped that way must have stepped on the mines.
Erich Bauer is running towards us. As he closes in I see another gang of Jews storming the armory on the opposite side of the yard. Erich Bauer sees where I am looking and sweeps his gun around to fire upon them. To him it is more important that he kills them than me.
My heart is pumping harder than it ever has and I wonder if I can get to him before he sees that I have sneaked up on him. I duck low so that my head is below the shoulder-line of the Jews around me and I cut through the crowd and make my way towards him.
The mud under our feet has become slippery and it is getting harder to stay standing up. I know that my life depends on the things I do or do not do in the next few moments and should I survive this I shall find myself encased in another life-or-death challenge.
Erich Bauer; that evil man who pulled the pendant from my wife’s beautiful neck still has his back to me. He is emptying his gun into the wooden wall of the armory in the hope of assassinating the Jews inside. I do not know if he is succeeding with his shots, and neither does he.
I approach him from behind and run the knife deep into his kidneys. He automatically stops firing and, with a childlike gasp, drops the machine gun to the ground. I twist the knife and wrench it forward, spilling his insides out through the huge gash I have created in his side.
The words; ‘Qedem ‘ahab,’ escape my lips, and an image of Henya in her younger days flashes across my mind’s eye.
Erich Bauer is dead and I dive back into the crowd of Jews. Now I am heading for the gate.
The fences on either side of the gate have given way under the force of people trying to get out of the compound. Jews all around me are shouting “Run” and “Don’t just stand there!” The German guards are bringing up the rear and I see that if I join the back of the throng which is trying to get out through the front I will probably be shot from behind.
I remember what Pechersky said about the rumour that the fields behind the guard’s barracks were probably not mined. I decide to chance it, because the alternative is looking increasingly horrific.
When I arrive at the rear of the barracks I witness a group of Jews waiting to climb through a gap that has been cut low in the fence. On the ground near the rear wooden wall of the barracks is a pistol and I see that in their eagerness to escape, no-one has thought to pick it up. Perhaps they have not noticed it.
I grab the pistol and force it into my pocket. Then I join the back of the queue, anxiously looking left and right to ensure that no guard has spotted this secret escape route.
On the other side of the fence is a stretch of field that is about one-hundred metres deep. The field ends at the edge of the forest and I see several Jews crossing the field, placing their feet in exactly the spot where the person before them has trodden.
No mines have gone off yet so it seems that the rumours were true. But I can’t help but ask myself the nagging question; if the German Guards deliberately didn’t mine the field behind their compound then they must surely have intended it as a quick escape route in the event of a problem in the camp, such as an uprising. So why are there no Guards escaping now? Are they all dead?
I do not risk my life a moment longer, as lingering in this camp now is the same as signing my own certificate of death. I drop to the floor and crawl towards the gap in the chain-link fence. In front of me is a man who has collapsed in the ditch that has been carved by a hundred knees and feet climbing through. I push his buttocks, ‘Come on! Get a move on!’
He moans and lifts his head out of the mud. He looks ahead at the forest across the field.
‘Come on!’ I say again, and in response he seems to summon up the energy to continue his slow shuffle through the gap.
I check behind me one more to see if anyone is coming. I can hear the shouting of the others near the main gate, and sporadic reports of Mauser fire accompanied by deathly screams.
Please God let me live through this!
The man in front of me is clear from the gap and he carries on crawling in the dirt. I follow him through, telling him that he needs to walk, or run if he is to escape.
He slowly gets to his feet, muddy face and straggled hair making him look like a cave dweller. I stand up too and push him ahead. ‘Run for your life my friend.’
He seems to dazed and exhausted to obey my advice, so I push past him and start across the muddy, uneven field, taking care to place my feet in existing footprints lest there be undiscovered mines on this patch.
Yet I feel liberated. Even to be walking across a minefield outside of the camp - where the very next step I take could be my last - is a million times better than living inside Sobibor. Much better to know that if I were to tread on a mine and die, at least it would be instant, because even that is better than the two years I lived in fear of my life in Sobibor and the ghetto. Better that it is over quickly, than allow the Nazi guards the power of psychological torture over me.
I make it to the edge of the forest. Others have made it too and are disappearing into the dark camouflage of the October trees. I see my comrades dashing back and forth, looking for the best way to head deeper into the cover of the woods.
A single rifle shot. I feel it slice my back, knocking the wind out of my very existence and I falter in my step.
Behind me in the distance towards the camp I hear laughter and shouting. ‘Sie erhalten, gibt es kein Entweichen!’
I twist around as I fall and see the guard behind the chain-link fence waving his rifle at me. I feel the cold creeping into my veins, as though no amount of clothing could spare me from the chill that grows from within. My body hits the ground and my head hits the wet mud and the greyness of the world pushes in from the corners of all my senses. The guard sends another bullet towards me and I hear it echoing along a dark unforgiving corridor. It misses me, flying over my head.
I look up at the angular shapes of light and dark branching cuts that form the canopy of trees above my head. The cold slices deep into everything I feel and all my attention is focussed not on the stopping of my heart but on the small stone-like sensation in my shoe. It is not a stone is it? It is Henya. No, it is the representation of our eternal love.
Qedem ‘ahab.
At least perhaps in some way I have avenged her brutal death when I killed Erich Bauer. At least I will get to see her now.
But we won’t be working in the fields. The Kommandant was wrong about that.
