The Commandant of Lubizec: A Novel of the Holocaust and Operation Reinhard (30 page)

“Got a lighter?”

Damiel shook his head. The men looked around for something to light the sock, and after a few seconds of cursing and patting their pockets Petranker glanced back at Oberhauser’s body. He searched through the man’s bloody clothes until he found something: a silver cigarette lighter.

“You okay with this?”

Damiel knew exactly what he meant. When the gasoline was ignited, the tank would blast apart and shrapnel would shred everything. Men on the other side of the camp would be knocked off their feet and an explosion, like a smoky exclamation point, would rise gently into the sky.

“I’m ready,” he said.

Once again, it is important to remember that Lubizec was a place without hope or mercy, and because none of the prisoners expected to survive the escape we shouldn’t view Damiel or Petranker as either heroic or fatalistic. They were just being realistic and they acted accordingly.

In an interview that was conducted in 1988, Damiel looks down at his gnarled hands and says about this moment, “It wasn’t that I wanted to die. Who does? If I was killed in an explosion, so be it. If I was shot, so be it. Sure I wanted more minutes of life, everyone wants such things, but I thought my body would be on the Roasts that night. We all did. And if I died in an explosion or if I died later at the hands of the SS, what did I care? Dead is dead. It was a matter of
how
I died, not if.”

Avrom Petranker flicked the thumbwheel of the cigarette lighter. A few weak sparks appeared in the dark. He tried again and again, but still nothing. He shook it next to his ear.

“Damn it.”

When asked about this in 1988, Dov Damiel smiles. “Ironic, no? A fire is eating the warehouses of Lubizec but we can’t light a stupid sock.”

The two men stood there and watched five more guards run towards Zurich. All of the prisoners were ordered over the loudspeaker to scoop snow into buckets and toss it onto the blaze. The machine guns slowed down and the searchlights were no longer making wild figure eights over the camp. It was during this time that a shaft of milky brightness cut over their heads and landed on the Road to Heaven just behind them. Damiel and Petranker weren’t in this beam but it was close enough to lift the darkness around them. Damiel saw the instrument panel on the engine and there, hanging above the keyhole of the ignition switch, was a little box with a white skull painted on it. He snapped it open and found a key tethered to a chain. The searchlight flicked away and the air around him was again doused with night. Damiel felt the instrument panel like a blind man until a little notched slot appeared under his fingertip. He pushed in the key. It clicked home.

“Stand back!” he yelled.

When he turned his wrist, the engine shook to life. The ground beneath his feet began to vibrate as pistons and valves clattered faster and faster. The moving parts inside the engine block were still bathed in oil but it was only a matter of time before the greased metal parts would shriek against each other and then, when this happened, everything would seize up. The whole crankcase would be torn up, destroyed.

“Do you have the clippers?” Damiel shouted over the noise.

Petranker nodded and they ran for the barbed-wire fence.

The door to Guth’s office wasn’t locked and when they stepped inside it was noticeably warmer. A song about homesickness was
murmuring on the radio and the three men glanced sideways at one another.
Where is he?
they asked with shrugging shoulders.

A large oak desk, the very symbol of power, stood before them but they weren’t sure what to do. It was odd being in a place that reminded them of their former lives because it was like entering a lost world where everything felt civilized and polite. They could have been standing in a banker’s office or an accountant’s, but instead, this place belonged to a serial mass murderer. There was a typewriter along with a stack of carbon paper. There was a slide rule, a dictionary, an ashtray, a teapot, a fern, a desk calendar, a potbelly stove, a series of file cabinets, and a wicker basket overflowing with toys. Framed photos huddled beneath a lamp, and it was very strange, wholly bizarre, seeing Guth’s family. His wife looked like a movie actress with her long beautiful hair that splashed down around her shoulders, and his children smiled up from what looked like a camping trip.

So this was the epicenter of the camp?

Moshe Taube, Chaim Zischer, and David Grinbaum held their knives and screwdrivers. They stood on an expensive carpet and couldn’t remember the last time they had done such a thing. Their shoes were muddy so they backed away to keep it clean. There were books on a shelf with titles like
Old Shatterhand, Applied Management & Systems
, and
A Short History of Barcelona
. Guth’s diploma from the University of Hamburg was on the wall along with a photo of Hitler.

A machine gun sounded close to the window and this made them all turn around.

“We should go,” Moshe said, getting out a pocket watch. “It’s almost time.”

When writing about this in
The Hell of Lubizec
, Chaim Zischer mentions something worth repeating. In his typically blunt fashion he states that “This escape is not an adventure story and our revolt should not be read as entertainment. Do not focus on what we did. Focus instead on those who died.”

Later, in a 1985 interview, he added, “Hundreds of thousands
were sealed into gas chambers and they watched a door swing shut on their futures. Whole villages died. Whole cities disappeared. That is the true history of Lubizec, not a handful of men running around with sharpened screwdrivers. People focus on our story but it is the story of nonescape that matters. I’m …” He stops here and waves his hand as if searching for the right word. “I’m such a tiny part of a much larger whole. I am nothing. I am like dust.”

And so, as we turn our attention back to the camp and back to the sparking machine guns, we should remember that what comes next should not be given greater attention than the days of annihilation that came before it. The real story of Lubizec is “Gas and Burn.” Not the wire cutters. Not the knives. Not the cigarette lighters. Not the running. No, none of it. The real story of Lubizec is about an engine coughing to life.

Before they left Guth’s office they ripped out the telephone cord and looked around for any guns that might be lying around. There were none, so they turned back into the night.

The Rose Garden was full of slashing lights and voices by this time. The men skirted the barracks and made their way to the fence. Bodies were slumped over in odd positions—many of them had been shot while running away. The fire from Zurich was enormous now and flames towered up from walls that were bright orange and white. Roofs collapsed in and jets of crackling sparks shot high into the sky. The guards held machine guns.

“Quickly, quickly! Throw the snow on it!”

The escaping men had gambled that a fire would distract the guards because they knew it was a major weakness of the camp; they knew there were no water pipes to douse these flames and, although there was a huge water tank next to the SS canteen for cooking and cleaning, there was no way to get this precious fluid over to Zurich. The idea that Jews might set fire to the camp never crossed the minds of the SS, and now because of this blinkered oversight based upon bigotry, the prisoners of Barrack 14 had the diversion they needed. They sprinted for the fence.

What happened next happened very fast.

Avrom Petranker was already snipping the wire when the others arrived. He worked quickly and grunted as first one strand was cut, then another. The metal was shiny and when it was cut it made a dull noise. The searchlights were on the main entrance and a murky orange from the fire danced all around them. The smell of burning wood hung in the air and it seemed almost like perfume because it was so different from the meaty bonfires they were used to. These flames were not made from burning fat and bone.

The strands of barbed wire fell. Petranker grunted his way forward.

“Two more,” he whispered. It was a triple-layered fence and he got down on his belly to clip the last strand. The ground beyond the camp was covered in untrampled snow.

“Hurry,” Damiel hissed.

Zischer’s hands were bloody as he pulled at the spiderwebbing of barbed wire. It ripped his coat and he got hung up in it. After a few tense moments they created a hole. Petranker crawled towards freedom and motioned for the others to follow.

“Let’s go,” he half shouted.

A group of prisoners throwing buckets of snow at a warehouse saw what was happening, and they backed towards the fence. Within a few seconds a steady stream of men were leaking out of the camp. The searchlights paced the front gate but, so far, the guards in the watchtowers hadn’t noticed the shadows leaving the camp. All eyes were on the fire.

This changed when a tremendous geyser of sound blasted up from beyond the barbed wire. It was a landmine, one of the hundreds that had been sown into the ground after Guth’s arrival in May 1942. The current prisoners of Lubizec knew nothing about the so-called “moat” because they arrived long after the explosives had been planted by previous prisoners. When one of these discs detonated, a cloud of fleshy dirt spewed into the air, and the searchlights immediately craned their necks towards the fence. Machine guns began shooting bullets into the night.

The men of Barrack 14 kept running. Zischer covered his head
when falling clumps of dirt showered down onto him. The snow was soft and he tried to put his feet where others had stepped but it was hard to see with the searchlights following first this man, then that man. Zips of yellow flashed all around him and prisoners fell as if the machine guns were merely tripping them up. He was breathing hard and he expected bullets to spear his chest at any second. Someone next to him—Moshe?—Petranker?—stepped on a mine and was blasted into mist. A wet spray hit Zischer’s face but he kept on running. Another mine went off—Damiel?—but he couldn’t be sure. Dirt and body parts rained down onto his shoulders and he was certain, absolutely certain, that David Grinbaum had been turned into jagged tissue. Bullets winged around him and he knew men behind him were being shot dead at a dizzying speed. It was total confusion, naked fear, and as he ran deeper into the woods, it felt like he was running through wax.

After several long minutes, he pushed himself against a tree and tried not to breathe too loudly. His tongue was dry and, while panting, he peeked around the trunk to look at the camp. Bullets flitted from the towers in strange slow arcs and a second later he heard their sound.

The voice on the loudspeaker echoed as if underwater. “Attention. Attention. Return to your barracks immediately. Any prisoner not in his barrack will be shot. Repeat. Any prisoner not in his barrack will be shot.”

The snow around him was slushy and he bent down to wet his lips. He chewed, he swallowed. It felt good to have something in his belly and he glanced around the woods before he broke into a wild run once again. Another explosion went off far behind him, and again there was the distant rattling of machine guns.

Zischer tumbled down a hill, hitting a large rock at the bottom, and he wondered where the others were. He paused to listen and during this moment he heard something behind him. It sounded like snapping branches and he flattened himself against an oak tree. The bark dug into his back. Blood pulsed in his eardrums.

“… m?”

Footsteps crunched over the snow.

“Chaim?”

It was Dov Damiel. They embraced and allowed themselves to weep for a few seconds. They were alive, they were free, and they weren’t wounded. They slipped to the ground and held each other.

What sounded like an air-raid siren came from the camp. They sat there for a long moment wondering what to do. They buttoned their wet coats and adjusted their hats as the wind made the branches sway and clack overhead. The air-raid siren whined on and a little farmhouse on the horizon snuffed out its lights.

“What now?” Dov whispered.

Zischer shrugged.

They crouched behind a tree and spoke with their hands.

Let’s go this way
.

No, this way
.

Is that a road?

I think so
.

The night was salted with stars as they trudged through sloppy wet snow. Their ankles were numb, they were shaking, their stomachs popped and gurgled, but they kept moving away from the camp, always away from the camp.

They found a dirt road and whispered about what to do next. It angered Zischer that he had to remain motionless behind an evergreen bush as they discussed their next move. All he wanted to do was run and run. It felt like he was stuck in a world of slow motion. It felt like a thick moony paste was weighing him down.

The headlights of a canvas-topped army truck came toward them. It slid down the road and squealed to a stop just beyond where they were hiding. A door opened and a guard stood on one of the running boards. The yellow headlights illuminated the road ahead and the engine thrummed. Exhaust hung in the air.

“Prisoners of Lubizec,” the guard shouted to the surrounding landscape. “Come home to warm food. We won’t hurt you.” A pause and then, “Prisoners of Lubizec, are you there? Can you hear me?”

Zischer and Damiel lowered themselves deeper into the snow.

“My Jew friends, where do you think you are? This is the Third Reich. The whole country is a prison for you. We will find you.” The guard pulled out his gun and fired blindly into the woods ahead. The crack echoed through the trees like dying thunder.

“Do you hear me, prisoners of Lubizec? The whole
country
is a prison for you fucking Jews. The whole country!”

He climbed back into the truck, and as it gear-shifted away, a few more shots were fired out the window.

The yellow headlights rounded a corner and felt their way through the woods. A moment passed and an invisible blanket of silence settled back onto the road. High above, a shooting star burrowed through the night and an owl called from somewhere far away.

The two former prisoners stood up and brushed snow off their clothes.