Siegfried Lederer's escape from Auschwitz
Gate of the "family camp" at Auschwitz II–Birkenau | |
Date | 5 April 1944 |
---|---|
Venue | Theresienstadt family camp of Auschwitz II-Birkenau |
Location | East Upper Silesia, Nazi Germany |
Type | Escape |
Participants | Viktor Pestek, Siegfried Lederer |
Outcome |
|
On the night of 5 April 1944, Siegfried Lederer, a
Lederer, a former
Siegfried Lederer

Siegfried Lederer [
In November 1939 and again in November 1940, Lederer was arrested by the
Viktor Pestek
Viktor Pestek [
After Werner had died of his injuries, partisans discovered Pestek. Despite the SS killings in the village, the partisans spared his life. This humane treatment while in enemy hands was apparently what reawakened Pestek's Catholic faith and convinced him to oppose Germany's policies of genocide.[13] According to Siegfried Lederer, Pestek said that he was a "killer, and a Soviet partisan spared my life anyway".[quote 1] By the time of his return to a German-controlled area, he had lost the use of his hand.[14] Found unfit for front-line service, he was posted to the Auschwitz concentration camp as a guard. Pestek was an SS Rottenführer, which was a junior non-commissioned rank.[11]
Auschwitz
Background

Jews transported from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz between September 1943 and May 1944 were housed in a separate block at
Pestek was initially appointed the supervisor of section BIId of Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Although he quickly developed a reputation for trading contraband,
On 8 March 1944, exactly six months from their arrival, the Jews from the family camp who had arrived in September were all
Escape
According to Jakov Tsur, Pestek escorted Cierer to the Gestapo for interrogation and made an offer to him. When interrogated later, Cierer claimed the offer was only a transfer to another part of the camp, not a complete escape. Cierer, whose three children were with him in the family camp, refused the offer but suggested Lederer.[23][24] Cierer and Pestek spoke in French to avoid being understood.[12][14] Cierer later shared his contacts with Lederer in the hope that his escape would be successful, and the two men planned together how to break news of Auschwitz to the outside world—a plan they concealed from Pestek until after the escape.[25] Other sources state that it was Lederer whom Pestek escorted to the Gestapo.[14][26]
As a member of the family camp and because he was detained for his resistance activities, Lederer believed he had nothing to lose. He told Pestek he was wealthy and that his contacts in the underground would help Pestek and Neumann.[26] Pestek and Lederer planned their escape, and their intended return to rescue Neumann, in considerable detail. Lederer would leave disguised as an SS man. After obtaining false documents in the Protectorate, Lederer and Pestek would return, impersonating SS officers, and present a forged Gestapo warrant for the arrest of Renée Neumann and her mother. The Auschwitz staff would provide a car and driver, who would be killed on the way to the Gestapo station. After disposing of the body, the escapees would take an express train to the Protectorate. The plan was based on Pestek's knowledge of protocol from his experience in the transport office.[2]
Because he was a wounded soldier, Pestek was entitled to a long leave and requested it for 6 April 1944.[26] On 3 April, he stole an SS uniform, pistol, and paybook for Lederer, who hid them in a double wall. Before standing guard at the gate of the family camp on the night of 5 April, Pestek left a bicycle by Lederer's barracks as a signal for him to come out. Pestek gave the correct passwords, telling the other guards Lederer was on special duty, and both men bicycled out of the front gate.[27] They went to the railway station outside Auschwitz and caught a train to Prague, avoiding border control by pretending to be luggage inspectors.[26] Lederer's absence was discovered in the morning of 6 April by an SS man inspecting the family camp who had seen a woman exiting Lederer's block and stepped in to investigate, only to discover Lederer missing.[28] At 11:30, SS-Sturmbannführer Friedrich Hartjenstein, the commandant of Auschwitz II-Birkenau, sent a telegram to the German police[note 3] notifying them that Lederer had escaped, probably disguised as an SS-Rottenführer. Another telegram four hours later reported that an SS man—presumably Pestek—was under suspicion for aiding the escape.[1] Cierer and others suspected of being close to Pestek or Lederer were interrogated.[29]
Aftermath
Obtaining false papers
In Prague, Pestek and Lederer sold jewelry that Lederer had obtained on the Auschwitz black market and bought civilian clothes. They also altered their uniforms to resemble Waffen-SS soldiers instead of
Several people helped hide Lederer during the summer of 1944. In May 1944, Lederer was hiding in Prague with Bedřich and Božena Dundr, at Vinohrady, Mánesova No. 16. Later, Lederer hid with Mrs. Dundr's brother Adolf Kopřiva in Na Závisti, Zbraslav, a suburb of Prague.[34] The Černík, Dundr, and Kopřiva families collaborated closely, providing basic needs for Lederer, and Černík and his wife were shadowed and interrogated by the Kriminalpolizei. Josef Plzák, who had known Lederer in the resistance, was arrested in June 1944 under suspicion of helping to hide him. Plzák provided assistance to those hiding Lederer and did not betray him.[35] Steiner, a German bank clerk named Ludwig Wallner whose Jewish sister-in-law had been deported to Auschwitz, and three others were indicted by the Nazi authorities for hiding Pestek and Lederer, and providing false papers for them.[32]
Breaking into Theresienstadt
On 20 April, Lederer made the first of four or five visits to the Theresienstadt Ghetto.[30][36] Unbeknownst to him, Lederer was not the first Auschwitz escapee to bring news of mass executions by gassing. Rabbi Leo Baeck, one of the leaders of the Jewish self-administration, had been informed by an anonymous escapee in August 1943.[note 4] Lederer went to the nearby village of Travčice, where he met with Václav Veselý, a barber who regularly went into the ghetto to shave the Czech guards; he knew Lederer and had helped the Jews in the past. Veselý told Lederer how to avoid the sentries, taking advantage of a security vulnerability around a hospital located outside the ghetto's perimeter. Lederer crossed the open ground outside the ghetto while the sentry was looking the other way and passed through a fence.[30]

Lederer told Leo Holzer about what he had witnessed at Auschwitz, and according to his later testimony also informed Jirka Petschauer, the captain of the Jewish police inside the ghetto, and Otto Schliesser, a member of the Council of Elders.[41] Holzer notified Baeck and Paul Eppstein, head of the self-administration. Eppstein, Baeck, and Holzer agreed the truth about Auschwitz must be kept strictly secret, lest a "catastrophe" befall the 35,000 prisoners at Theresienstadt at the time.[42] Although rumors about the fate awaiting them at Auschwitz had already spread around the ghetto, many people refused to believe them.[43] Almost all the Jews who were deported to the family camp in May 1944 were unaware of Lederer's previous visit to Theresienstadt, and the few who had access to Lederer's reports made no effort to avoid deportation.[44] Even the resistance members in the fire brigade opposed armed resistance, trusting the June 1944 Red Cross visit to ensure the survival of Theresienstadt's Jews.[41]
Explaining the reaction to the possibility of imminent death, Israeli historian and survivor Jakov Tsur stated that no one was capable of understanding Auschwitz until he or she had arrived and was undergoing selection.[45] Miroslav Kárný said that he and his friends knew before their deportation on 28 September 1944 that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz, but that "no human being could accept these facts as truth".[quote 3] Lederer made two or three trips into the ghetto in May, smuggling weapons and parts of a radio transmitter that he received from Josef Pokorný.[47]
Return to Auschwitz
Pestek and Lederer returned to Auschwitz between late April and June,
Josef Neumann said he had been approached by an unknown SS man—probably Pestek—with an offer of escape. Before they could enact their plans, the alarm was raised and SS guards arrived. Neumann and Pestek were caught, handcuffed together, and carried away; both were interrogated and tortured at
Smuggling a report to Switzerland
In early June, Lederer attempted to smuggle a report on Auschwitz to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in neutral Switzerland. In Plzeň, he met Czech journalist Eduard Kotora, to whom he confided his plans. Kotora accompanied Lederer to the Křimice station, where the latter boarded a train. Using false papers provided by Steiner and a false work permit provided by the Zbraslav resistance, Lederer continued to the Škodovák station, which was used by many Czechs crossing the border to work at the Škoda Works in the Sudetenland. According to Lederer, he was then driven to Constance, alternately dressed as a civilian and an SS officer. He met the widow of Werner, Pestek's SS colleague who was killed in action in Belarus, and gave her some of Werner's personal possessions that had ended up in Pestek's hands. Mrs. Werner introduced Lederer to the captain of a boat on Lake Constance, who agreed to smuggle the report across the border to Switzerland and send it to the ICRC.[53]
There is no evidence the report reached its destination, or even that Lederer sent it as he described. Kárný writes that the most likely interpretation is that the skipper destroyed the report to avoid difficulties with border control.[53] According to Czech historian Erich Kulka, the ICRC probably did not receive the report.[54] Lederer said in 1967 that he had the opportunity to escape to Switzerland but decided not to because his family had already been killed by the Germans and he felt obliged to continue to fight. According to Kárný, Lederer regarded fleeing to Switzerland as cowardice and desertion, even though Kárný notes that his testimony on Auschwitz would have been more credible if he had delivered it in person.[55]
Afterwards

According to Lederer, he joined the Kriváň partisan group and tried to cross the border to fight in the Slovak National Uprising (August–October 1944), and was wounded in the attempt.[56] In November, he made his last visit to Theresienstadt, staying about eight days to compile a detailed report on the Small Fortress, the ghetto, and the Sudeten barracks to which the Germans had transferred the Reich Security Main Office archives in 1943.[47] Lederer's report contained information for which, according to Kárný, "every Allied secret service would have given anything"[quote 4] to obtain. There is no evidence that Lederer tried to send it to the Allies.[57]
Following this, Lederer said he returned to Zbraslav and joined a partisan group named after S. P. Vezděněv and continued his activity with Plzeňák 28. According to Kárný, Lederer's role in the latter group, which during 1944 focused on sabotaging the Roderstein capacitor factory and a local Wehrmacht installation is unclear.
Assessment
Pestek was one of only two or three Auschwitz guards who risked their lives to help inmates escape. According to Austrian historian and Auschwitz survivor Hermann Langbein, his actions in particular indicate the limits of the absolute totalitarian hierarchy imposed by SS leaders.[59] Langbein evaluates Pestek's actions more favorably than those of the guards who helped inmates escape during the evacuation of the camp in January 1945 in hopes of avoiding punishment for their crimes.[51] One survivor described Pestek as "a decent person who never beat inmates" and Yehuda Bacon said he was "more humane" than other SS guards. Czech prisoners at the family camp reportedly called him "miláček", Czech for "darling".[11] Bacon also said Pestek maintained confidential contact with Fredy Hirsch, a leader in the family camp until his death in the 8 March liquidation.[60] According to psychologist Ruth Linn, Pestek may have helped Lederer in an attempt to distance himself from Nazi crimes because his home in Bukovina had been recently occupied by the advancing Red Army.[43] Pestek is not recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations" by Yad Vashem.[61]
Although described as "one of the most bizarre" escapes of World War II by historian Alan J. Levine,[62] Lederer's flight was overshadowed by that of Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler two days later,[63] which produced the Vrba–Wetzler report.[64] Although some authors, including Levine,[52] have connected Lederer's report to the fact that the second liquidation of the family camp spared those able to work, Miroslav Kárný emphasizes that the decision was made due to the increasing labor shortage.[55] Kárný, who felt that Lederer's actions needed no embellishment, argued that Lederer and the Czech journalist Eduard Kotora, who publicized the former's actions, had exaggerated them, and that these distortions had been uncritically repeated by other writers. One influential,[note 6] although in parts inaccurate,[note 7] account of the escape was Erich Kulka's semi-fictional 1966 book Escape from Auschwitz.[67] Czech-born Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer wrote in the introduction of the book that "The story that Erich Kulka tells is not fiction".[68] Kulka claimed that his work was historically accurate, even while describing it as a "historical novel".[69]
Notes
- ^ For her resistance activities, Škardová was sentenced to death and executed in 1943. The indictment does not mention Lederer.[4]
- ^ After the war, Holzer estimated that half the men in the fire brigade were in the resistance.[8]
- ^ The telegram was sent to the Reich Security Main Office, the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office, the Kriminalpolizei, the Gestapo, and the border police.[1]
- ^ According to Baeck's testimony after the war, an unknown Mischling had been deported directly to Auschwitz and later transferred to a work detail, from which he escaped. With the help of a Czech gendarme, he smuggled himself into the ghetto to warn an engineer who was a friend of his, probably Julius Grünberger. Baeck heard the report from Grünberger in August 1943.[37][38] Baeck did not tell anyone of this.[39][40] In his memoirs, he wrote: "Living in the expectation of death by gassing would only be the harder. And this death was not certain for all—there was selection for slave labor; perhaps not all transports went to Auschwitz. So came the grave decision to tell no one."[40] Grünberger's report spread as a rumor through Theresienstadt but many people refused to believe it.[40]
- ^ Langbein (2005, p. 445) gives the date as 23 May. Levine (2000, p. 218) has 26 May. According to Kárný (1997, p. 177), it could have been as early as late April (per Ryszard Henryk Kordek) or as late as June (per Lederer), who said that he had visited Constance first.[41] Josef Neumann gave conflicting testimony on when the return had occurred, saying it was 25 May and late April at different times.[48][49] According to Tsur (1994, p. 135), the June date is too late to be plausible; the return probably happened in late May.
- ^ Escape from Auschwitz was first published in 1966 in both Czech (as Útěk z tábora smrti, Prague) and English (Pergamon Press, United States). In 1986, it was republished and made a Jewish Book Council selection. Publishers Weekly described the book as "a searing delineation of the horrors of the Nazi regime".[65]
- ^ For example, Kulka's account of the trip to Switzerland was denied by all witnesses, and not supported by the documentary evidence.[66]
Original quotes
- ^ German: Ich war ein Mörder, und mir, dem Mörder, hat ein sowjetischer Partisan das Leben geschenkt.[14]
- ^ Czech: Nenávidím sám sebe za to, že se musím dívat na to, jak jsou zabíjeny ženy a děti. Chtěl bych něco udělat, abych zapomněl na zápach pálícího lidského se masa a mohl se cítit trošku čistší.[22]
- ^ German: daß kein Mensch imstande wäre, diese Tatsachen als Wahrheit anzunehmen[46]
- ^ German: Für ein Dokument dieser Art hätte jeder alliierte Geheimdienst mehr als alles gegeben.[57]
References
Citations
- ^ a b c Kárný 1997, p. 157.
- ^ a b c d e Levine 2000, p. 216.
- ^ Kárný 1997, pp. 160–161.
- ^ a b Kárný 1997, p. 178.
- ^ a b Kárný 1997, p. 160.
- ^ Czech, Długoborski & Piper 1995, p. 99.
- ^ a b Kárný 1997, p. 161.
- ^ Kárný 1997, p. 179.
- ^ Kárný 1997, pp. 161–162.
- ^ a b c d e f Kárný 1997, p. 162.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Langbein 2005, p. 442.
- ^ a b c d e f Tsur 1994, p. 139.
- ^ Langbein 2005, pp. 442, 446.
- ^ a b c d e f Kárný 1997, p. 163.
- ^ Kulka 1965, p. 199.
- ^ a b Tsur 1994, p. 137.
- ^ Langbein 2005, p. 280.
- ^ Levine 2000, p. 215.
- ^ Tsur 1994, p. 140.
- ^ Langbein 2005, pp. 442–443.
- ^ Linn 2004, pp. 15–16.
- ^ Cílek & Moulis 2018, 177.
- ^ Kárný 1997, pp. 163, 179–180.
- ^ Tsur 1994, pp. 139–140.
- ^ Tsur 1994, pp. 139–141.
- ^ a b c d e f Langbein 2005, p. 445.
- ^ Levine 2000, pp. 216–217.
- ^ Tsur 1994, p. 141.
- ^ Tsur 1994, pp. 141, 143.
- ^ a b c Levine 2000, p. 217.
- ^ Kárný 1997, pp. 164–165.
- ^ a b Kárný 1997, p. 166.
- ^ Kárný 1997, p. 165.
- ^ Kárný 1997, p. 164.
- ^ Kárný 1997, pp. 165–166.
- ^ Kárný 1997, p. 167.
- ^ Kárný 1997, pp. 180–181.
- ^ Adler 2017, p. 127.
- ^ Adler 2017, p. 128.
- ^ a b c Housden 2013, p. 129.
- ^ a b c Kulka 1965, p. 192.
- ^ Kárný 1997, p. 168.
- ^ a b c Linn 2004, p. 16.
- ^ Tsur 1994, pp. 144–145.
- ^ Tsur 1994, p. 145.
- ^ Kárný 1995, p. 16.
- ^ a b Kárný 1997, p. 169.
- ^ a b c d Kárný 1997, p. 175.
- ^ a b c d e Langbein 2005, p. 446.
- ^ Kárný 1997, pp. 174–175.
- ^ a b Langbein 2005, p. 447.
- ^ a b Levine 2000, p. 219.
- ^ a b Kárný 1997, p. 171.
- ^ a b Kulka 1965, p. 193.
- ^ a b Kárný 1997, p. 172.
- ^ a b Kárný 1997, p. 177.
- ^ a b Kárný 1997, p. 170.
- ^ Kulka 1986, p. 143.
- ^ Langbein 2005, pp. 63, 442, 448.
- ^ Langbein 2005, p. 444.
- ^ Yad Vashem 2018.
- ^ Levine 2000, p. 213.
- ^ Linn 2004, pp. 16–17.
- ^ Kárný 1998, pp. 558, 564, n. 5.
- ^ Publishers Weekly 1986.
- ^ Kárný 1997, p. 181.
- ^ Kárný 1997, pp. 159, 167.
- ^ Kulka 1986, p. xvii.
- ^ Kulka 1986, pp. xi–xii.
Print sources
- ISBN 978-0-521-88146-3.
- Cílek, Roman; Moulis, Miloslav (2018). Zapomeňte, že jste byli lidmi… [Forget that you were Human Beings...] (in Czech). Prague: Epocha. ISBN 978-80-7425-886-2.
- Czech, Danuta; Długoborski, Wacław; OCLC 34733879.
- ISBN 978-1-134-80846-5.
- )
- Kárný, Miroslav (1997). Die Flucht des Auschwitzer Häftlings Vítězslav Lederer und der tschechische Widerstand [The Escape of Auschwitz Prisoner Vítězslav Lederer and the Czech Resistance] (in German). pp. 157–183. )
- Kárný, Miroslav (1998). "The Vrba and Wetzler report". In Gutman, Israel; Berenbaum, Michael (eds.). Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. Bloomington and Indianapolis: ISBN 978-0-253-20884-2.
- OCLC 12720535.
- Kulka, Erich (1986) [1966]. Escape From Auschwitz. South Hadley: Bergin & Garvey Publishers. ISBN 978-0-89789-088-5.
- ISBN 978-0-8078-6363-3.
- Levine, Alan J. (2000). Captivity, Flight, and Survival in World War II. Westport: ISBN 978-0-275-96955-4.
- ISBN 978-0-8014-4130-1.
- Tsur, Jakov (1994). "Lederův a Pestekův útěk" [Lederer and Pestek's Escape]. In )
Web sources
- "Nonfiction Book Review: Escape from Auschwitz by Erich Kulka, Author J F Bergin & Garvey $28.95 (150p) ISBN 978-0-89789-088-5". Publishers Weekly. March 1986. Retrieved 9 September 2018.
- "Names of Righteous by Country". Yad Vashem. 2018. Retrieved 9 August 2018.