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

Walter once again caught a favorable break. He heard someone speaking Slovak in the throng of men who had survived the cull. Walter approached the man named Laco Fischer and learned he was a dentist from a town near Trnava. Laco, a veteran of Auschwitz, helped get Walter and Josef reassigned to one of the best duties in Auschwitz: Kanada, where he would be part of the Clearing Command. The men moved to Block 4, where their living conditions improved.

Kanada housed the belongings of new arrivals. Walter recounts seeing mountains of luggage, blankets, and pots and pans. SS officers assigned prisoners to sort the belongings. There were three tasks. First, prisoners separated the usable from the broken or damaged items. Second, they removed all signs of Jewish ownership. Third, they searched for hidden valuables, such as jewels or money. Women prisoners would even squeeze tubes of toothpaste looking for valuables.

Two Kapos oversaw the prisoners at Kanada: Otto Graf and Hans König, the latter known as the King of Kanada (König is the German word for “king”). Both mercilessly beat prisoners. After watching other prisoners and seeing that during this time, the two Kapos were distracted, Walter realized he needed to use these beatings to sneak food from the luggage, which was plentiful in Kanada. Stealing food for himself enabled him to survive.

Walter soon realized the dark truth of what he was doing at Kanada: He was sorting the belongings of dead Jewish people. Auschwitz was not just a concentration camp but also a death camp. Nazi Germany was committing genocide against the Jewish people.

In this chapter, Freedland explains “what Walter did not know and could not imagine” (73). Freedland explains first that a death camp was not the original purpose for Auschwitz. SS officers initially sought out the space because it was near both a railway network and coal mine. They then kept Polish political prisoners in the camp, forcing them into slave labor. The head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, realized the Germans could make money from the concentration camps. Himmler believed that he could use slave labor to build factories and plants in southeast Poland (the location of Auschwitz), turning the German-occupied territory into an industrial powerhouse.

Around the time Walter arrived at Auschwitz, the camp acquired a new role. In July 1942, the Nazis integrated the camp into their most heinous plan: the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” The plan’s goal was the elimination of the Jewish people. Walter did not know about this plan.

Although it was formalized in July 1942, this plan began a year earlier. As the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union and Poland, they murdered Jewish people in their homes and towns. The Nazis wanted to create dedicated killing centers in Poland. They started with death camps at Belzec (where the women and elderly on Walter’s train from Nováky were sent), Sobibor, Treblinka, and eventually Majdanek. SS officers went to great lengths to conceal the gas chambers from the prisoners and ordinary citizens.

The Nazis also experimented with how best to dispose of bodies. Older methods were often crude and did not hide the horrors taking place. For example, the Nazis first buried the bodies, but the poisoned bodies poisoned the land. People also noticed the stench that pervaded the camp. The Nazis eventually built crematoriums, which enabled them to burn close to 1,500 bodies per day. The gas chambers combined with the crematoriums enabled Nazi Germany to murder millions of Jewish people.

While Auschwitz was a death camp, it also remained an economic hub because of Kanada. Precious stones, metals, gold watches, rings, and cash were of particular importance. These valuables went into trunks. SS officers then transported these trunks to SS headquarters in Berlin.

The Nazis also plundered wealth from corpses. They ordered prisoners to remove hair (used in German factories to make bombs), artificial limbs (resold), and gold teeth. To emphasize how much wealth the Nazis generated, Freedland notes that estimates suggest Nazi Germany plundered $2 billion USD from the belongings and bodies of Jewish people in 1942. This money fueled Nazi Germany’s war machine. During his time in Kanada, Walter once stole $20,000 in cash. Knowing that hanging on to the money would obviously put his life in danger, Walter instead deposited the money in a latrine. Walter later recounted that doing so “was a small act of sabotage. But destroying $20,000 was also an act of spite” (89). He’d rather destroy the money than see it fall into the hands of Nazis who would use it to further destroy his people.

Walter could not see the full impact Kanada had on Nazi Germany. He did, however, understand its impact on prisoner hierarchy in Auschwitz. While SS officers, including Fries, searched prisoners working in Kanada at the end of the day, many still managed to smuggle out riches, including food, new shoes, and soap. Freedland underscores that “a place in the Clearing Command allowed a handful of inmates a life of improbable, surreal luxury” (88).

These goods also served as currency, enabling prisoners to “organize” or buy favors. Food rations served as the basic currency. People could organize favors with food (and other goods), including securing positions as Kapos or block elders, buying preferential treatment with SS officers, meat, medicine, etc. Prisoners with access to goods from Kanada had greater status because of the favors they could buy.

Walter proved to be a reliable worker. He served as the personal courier to his direct overseer, a man named Bruno. Bruno sent gifts to his girlfriend, who oversaw the sorting women. During one trip, Bruno gave Walter too many gifts. An SS officer named Richard Wiegleb caught Walter with the stolen goods. While Wiegleb knew Walter stole the goods for Bruno, he demanded that Walter admit it and gave him 47 lashes. Walter never answered Wiegleb’s question.

The beating left Walter unable to work. He developed an open wound that became infected. He needed an operation, which seemed impossible. Walter refused to accept death. Instead, he turned to Bruno for help since Walter had not betrayed him. Bruno, understanding that his own reputation was on the line, arranged treatment for Walter by bartering and trading. Although the surgery was painful, it was successful. Walter returned to work, but this time on the ramp.