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CHAPTER V

ESCAPE

AFTER drill on one of these dreary Sundays I found the prisoner Kirsch sobbing in his bunk.

"What are you crying about?"

He refused to answer at first. It took considerable coaxing before I could prevail upon him to unburden his mind.

"I can't stand it any more," he said. "I'm going to run away. I don't care what happens."

"You're crazy," I said. "How are you going to get out of here? They're just waiting for a chance like that."

He shook his head, and refused to say another word. I tried to talk him out of the idea, to explain the senselessness of such a project. All I got in response was, "Yes, yes. You're right. I know that myself. But I can't stand it any more.'

I talked the thing over with Fritz and the Schieber, and we agreed that we would have to get Kirsch into our work squad, where we could keep an eye on him and preserve him from a complete collapse.

The same night Kirsch was caught by the sentry as he was trying to crawl through the barbed wire. The sentry, a South German peasant boy who had found his way into camp heaven knows how, had passed the story on to a comrade, from whom our Schieber heard it after work that evening. We contrived to be put on cleaning duty in the guard room and, through the mediation of the contact man, to interview the sentry himself.

"I don't know what to tell you-I don't know what to do. Should I report him or shouldn't I report him? I feel sorry for him-but if it gets out, then I'll catch it. I was standing in the sentry box and suddenly I hear something rustling in the wire. 'Hey there,' I yell, 'I think you're going the wrong way.' I jump at him and grab him by the arm. He just stands there quiet and never says a word. When I flash my pocket searchlight, I see he's crying. I feel sorry for him. 'Get in,' I tell him. But he shakes his head. 'I have to go home,' he says. 'My wife can't manage alone. There's nothing planted for the winter,' he says. 'I have two small children. I have to go home.' For a minute I didn't know what to do; but duty's duty. 'If you keep your mouth shut,' I tell him, 'I won't report you. Now get in!' So he goes in."

The Schieber convinced the sentry that the story couldn't possibly get out if he held his own tongue, and the sentry promised not to report the matter.

Kirsch was to be transferred to our squad at inspection Tuesday evening. One of our men wanted to go over to Dyke Number One, where a townsman of his worked. To all appearances Kirsch had concurred in the plan. But things turned out differently.

At about eleven on Tuesday morning two sentries, armed with rifles, came tearing along on their motorcycles and held a hasty conference with our head guard, who drew out his whistle and blew a shrill note to call us together.

"Fall in, fall in!" he cried nervously.

There was something in the wind.

"Count off!"

We were all present.

"Forward--march! "

We returned to camp at a quick march. Somewhere along the road word leaked out that a prisoner had escaped. Kirsch!

Back in camp we came upon a scene of wild confusion. The flight of a prisoner had thrown the Black Shirts into a panic. The guard was doubled, the prisoners driven to their sleeping quarters and locked in. Every available car, bicycle and motorcycle was sent out in pursuit of the fleeing Kirsch.

In our bunks we were supplied with additional details Kirsch had vanished in the forest--just when nobody knew. It was some time before the prisoners themselves realized that he was no longer among them. They called his name and hunted for him till the sentries finally caught on to the fact that he had escaped. Now they thought they were up against a conspiracy of the entire work squad. They tore their rifles from their shoulders and rounded up the prisoners. Arms raised high, the men were driven at a trot back through the two neighboring villages to camp--a weird sight which the townsfolk watched in awe and silence.

On receipt of the news the commandant had ordered all work squads back to camp. We could hear him now, bellowing to the sentries in the courtyard outside, "The camp is to be held at all costs!"

When, a few hours later, the first scouting parties returned from their unsuccessful search, a general inspection was called. Each prisoner in Kirsch's company was obliged to fall out as his name was called and report what he knew of the runaway, whether he had been on intimate terms with him, whether Kirsch had spoken of his plan of escape.

The squad in which Kirsch had worked was sentenced to an indeterminate period of more rigorous discipline. They were to receive only two slices of bread and two glasses of water daily, and to be deprived of the customary half hour's leisure in the evening. At the same time certain changes for the worse were made in the living and working conditions of the rest of us. Smoking at work and card playing in the evening was forbidden, we were to be deprived of our ten A.M. slice of bread, and three successive Sundays were appointed as fast days. We were forbidden to go to the latrines during working hours.

"You can use your shoes, you thieves!" yelled the officer on duty. "You don't deserve to be treated like human beings."

Anyone guilty of the slightest offense that day was flogged by officers and troopers.

The spies were ordered to find out who Kirsch's accomplices had been, both outside the camp and in. The administration was convinced of the existence of a carefully matured and far-flung plot. Neither the official investigation, however, nor the activities of the informers bore any fruit. Kirsch seemed to have been a reticent person who had no close friends and whom no one would have credited with the spirit to do what he had done.

I was on tenterhooks lest the story of his previous attempt come to light and involve both the Schieber and me. But the guards kept their own counsel.

That night the commandant had his henchmen spread the report that if Kirsch returned of his own volition, or could be apprehended with the assistance of the prisoners, the restrictions imposed upon us would be withdrawn. Anyone providing information as to his probable hiding place would be promptly released. At rising time next morning Schinderknecht enlarged on the theme.

"I tell you one thing--when the fellow's caught, it'll be Up to you to give him such a lacing that he won't stir from the spot. The commandant knows you had nothing to do with his flight. But he's got to impose the penalties. You've got that good-for-nothing to thank if your grub's been cut. And that's just a starter. There'll be worse to come."

As a result of the administration tactics the feeling of the prisoners-who, despite the disagreeable consequences of his flight, had all been for Kirsch at first--underwent a gradual change.

"Rotten thing to do--getting us all into this mess. If we can stand it so can he. That's comradeship for you. It's no way for a worker to act." Such was the view, skillfully stirred up and disseminated by the provocateurs, which found more and more frequent expression among the prisoners.

The majority of us, who continued to regard Kirsch's flight as a set-back for the Black Shirts and a moral victory for the prisoners, were naturally powerless to express our sympathy. When we returned from work that evening we found that the artificially stimulated antagonism against Kirsch had made still further headway. The story now ran that he wasn't a political prisoner at all, but a criminal, and had spent several years in prison for theft; also that the commandant would be glad to rescind the penalties against us the moment he was convinced that no one supported Kirsch.

"Do you know what the commandant said in the tailor shop today?" inquired one of our company spies eagerly. "'I'm curious to see,' he said, 'whether the prisoners have sense of honor enough to wash their hands of the bastard. If I were sure of that,' he said, 'I'd listen to reason. Otherwise I'll have to try different measures.' "

Our one hope was that Kirsch would get away. Even if he traveled only by night, he could reach the border in three days. When, on the morning of the third day, we marched off without having had any news of him, we believed him to have reached safety.

On our return that evening, however, Kirsch was standing chained in the yard, his face swollen horribly. Some of the workshop prisoners had pitched into him the moment he had been brought back.

The provocative tactics reached their height that evening when the most formidable of the stormleaders conducted the inspection himself.

"The administration," he said, "considers the punishment of Kirsch to be the affair of the prisoners, and will not interfere. But we expect from you such drastic action as will discourage anyone else from following his example. We grant you the privilege of taking the law into your own hands, and trust that you will take advantage of it."

Inspection over, a group of twelve or fifteen men gathered about the troopers, while the spies sped busily back and forth between them and the Administration Building. They were organizing the punitive squad. Our Schieber assembled a few of the most dependable comrades in the latrine, in an effort to evolve some plan by which we might protect Kirsch. It was decided to inform the administration through Schinderknecht that Company Eight was itching to thrash Kirsch. Let them hand him over to Company Eight. We would first station a group at the entrance to our sleeping quarters to guard against invasion from certain elements in other companies. Then we would stage a mock beating for the benefit of the two spies in our own company, which ought not to present too many difficulties if we placed Kirsch in the third story and, under cover of the darkness, belabored the pallet. At any rate, that seemed our only chance. The Schieber went in search of Schinderknecht, while we others rounded up our staunchest comrades in the Eighth and acquainted them with the plan.

The bedtime whistle sounded before the Schieber returned. There was nothing we could do. By order of the commandant Kirsch had been taken to the sleeping quarters of Company Two and placed right at the entrance, where he would be visible from the main corridor and accessible to all comers. The spies were going about, discouraging any possible action in his favor. Word passed from bunk to bunk that anyone coming to Kirsch's defense would be accorded similar treatment. The sentry in the main corridor had been withdrawn. At seven-thirty the lights went out. The stillness was deathlike. At eight the stormleader of the police department made the rounds. It was the first and last time he ever appeared below. Without uttering a word he made his way slowly through passage after passage till every company had been visited.

Our nerves strained at the breaking point; we lay in the darkness. Sleep was impossible. Near us we could hear one of the men praying softly. Never before had the atmosphere of the cellar seemed so sinister.

An hour and a half must have elapsed in this fashion, when suddenly word was passed round that one of our two company spies had stolen out.

By the wan light glimmering into the main corridor from the courtyard, we could see a group of prisoners gathering at the entrance to the sleeping quarters of Company Two. Clad only in socks and underwear, they were armed with boards, belts and straps. A command in an undertone and they made a dash for Kirsch's bunk.

In mortal terror Kirsch shrieked for help. Next moment they wrapped the covers round his head and silenced him. We could hear the hasty blows. The bunk was too narrow. They got into each other's way. They vanished as silently as they had come. The prisoners lay quiet as the grave.

Half an hour later they returned.

"Cowardly sneaks!" a prisoner from Company Four said loudly. In a jiffy they had him out of his bunk and on the floor. Then they went back to Kirsch and dragged him out to the corridor, muffled his head in a blanket and started beating him as though he had been a block of wood.

"Help! Help! Help!" Kirsch groaned.

A command from the darkness and they vanished. Some of the men from Company Two carried Kirsch back to his bunk.

The sluggers returned a third time and a fourth Kirsch was barely alive when at last they left him lying naked in the corridor. The spy stole back to his bed. His job was done.

Only then did the sentry appear in the corridor.

"What's been going on here?" he said. "Leave you alone for a minute, and you think you can do as you please." With that he went off to summon the first-aid attendant.

The latter, a good-natured youth who had at one time been a member of the Social-Democratic Workers' First Aid Association, arrived with his kit to bind up Kirsch's wounds. He started bathing the face of the unconscious man, but had to stop and vomit. The guard sent for the camp doctor-a Nazi and a special prisoner who had been placed in the concentration camp for embezzling funds from the Physicians' Federation. This was the Third Reich's customary procedure in dealing with cases of petty internal corruption. It did away with the publicity of a legal suit. Since the disgraced Nazi's sole object was to rehabilitate himself with all possible speed, he proved an ideal doctor for the camp administration. He issued official death certificates for prisoners who had been killed by torture; these certificates generally cited brain fever or a kidney ailment as the cause of death. It was his habit to denounce as malingerers prisoners who lay in bed with a high fever and, on more than one occasion, he had substituted a slap across a sick man's face for an examination. He now had Kirsch carried to the First Aid Station, where the prisoner lay all night. Next morning he was transferred to the city hospital. That was the last we ever heard of him.

As dawn approached the dreadful oppressiveness of the night began to wear off. Instinctively the comrades drew closer to each other. The provocateurs were silent. The administration officially repudiated the punitive squad, and the rumor circulated that the affair would be investigated. There the matter ended.

One of the comrades had some information about Kirsch's flight. He had started by traveling eastward toward the border, but had changed his plans after the first night because he could not bring himself to flee abroad without having seen his family once more. The camp administration had of course notified the local Nazis of his region, and they captured him before he had so much as set foot in his village.

We made it our business to identify all those who had taken part in the flogging of Kirsch. The ringleader had been an eighteen-year-old stoolpigeon named Hartwig, the lover of Senior Stormleader von Zaskowsky. It was he, too, who had stripped Kirsch of his shirt and pants as he lay in the corridor. A few of the others had availed themselves of the opportunity of indulging-not alone with impunity but by official invitation-in their old trade of thuggery. These were out-and-out lumpen-proletarians they had somehow sneaked into the ranks of the workers' organizations, though they belonged more properly among the Black Shirts. Three or four political neutrals had been taken in by the lies of the administration and were honestly incensed over the fact that we should all have to suffer for the sake of a "rascal and vagabond" like Kirsch.

The punitive squad had also included one Social-Democrat and one Communist. It was important to us to discover what had prompted them to do hangman's service on the person of their comrade. The Social-Democrat maintained that such incidents as Kirsch's attempted flight would merely serve to delay for weeks and months the release of other prisoners and aggravate the difficulty of prison conditions for us all. It was to the prisoners' interest, he said, to steer clear of anything which would stir up the Black Shirts. Order in camp must be preserved each of us must be prepared to"do his duty"-in other words, to take the burden of forced labor willingly upon his shoulders. When we pointed out that he was making the Nazi cause his own, he denied it indignantly. Not at all. He was a Social-Democrat, now as always.

The Communist worked in the auto repair shop, where he came into frequent contact with the Black Shirts. He was often drafted to drive the cars of the officers, and, being a skilled mechanic, was soon enjoying all sorts of special privileges. The troopers would slip him an occasional bottle of beer, he smoked cigars bought for him by the officers, and he was excused from reporting for inspection. Having been thoroughly corrupted by these methods, he had deserted the cause and was now chiefly concerned with winning the good will of his new masters.

The prisoners who had participated in Kirsch's "punishment" were shunned like the plague by the others. No one talked to them, they sat by themselves during the noon hour, and the feeling of hostility against them, instead of abating with time, seemed to increase.

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