June 20, 1942 – Daring Escape from Auschwitz

On June 20, 1942, four Polish prisoners mounted a daring escape out of Auschwitz.

Kazimierz Piechowski, Stanisław Jaster, Józef Lempart and Eugeniusz Bender sneaked into a warehouse for the Auschwitz guards and stole SS uniforms and weapons, and then made off with the Camp Commandant’s personal Steyr 220 sedan. At the locked main gate, Piechowski (the only escapee who knew German) yelled, “Wake up, you buggers! Open up or I’ll open you up!” The guards on duty rushed the car through, thinking the four escapees were angry SS officers.

None of the runaways were ever recaptured. In escaping, Jaster, who was a member of the secret underground resistance organization built among the prisoners by Captain Witold Pilecki, smuggled one of Pilecki’s intelligence reports out to Home Army leaders.

“I venture to suggest that the escape of four inmates from Auschwitz in the finest car there, the Camp Commandant’s, dressed in SS uniforms, against the background of that hell, could make a truly fine subject for a film,” wrote Witold Pilecki in his report, The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery (pp. 204–205).

Pilecki described the aftereffects of the escape in the camp that evening at roll call, when the four prisoners turned up missing:

“Lagerführer Aumeier [Hans Aumeier], hastening on horseback from Buna for evening roll call, met the car en route. He dutifully saluted, somewhat surprised that the driver was taking the car over a disused grade crossing.

“He put it down to vodka and the driver’s weak head.

“They [the escapees] kept their nerve and the escape succeeded.

“The Lagerfuhrer arrived back at Auschwitz in time for roll call, when everyone was already standing with their blocks in dressed ranks.

“Now the fun really began!

“He was informed that four inmates were missing from roll call and, worse still, that they had taken the Commandant’s car.

“This took place in the blockführerstube [SS guardroom].

“Aumeier went almost crazy, tearing out his hair. He was shouting that he had met them.

“Then he threw his cap in despair on the ground and … suddenly burst out laughing.

“There were no reprisals, no shootings and no long punishment parades.

“That policy dated from February of ’42.”

While collective responsibility for the escape was not applied against the rest of the prisoners, the escapees’ families were not so lucky. Piechowski’s and Jaster’s parents were imprisoned at Auschwitz, as was Lempart’s mother, where they perished. The kapo [a trusted prisoner given a supervisory role] in charge of the motor pool, Kurt Pachala, was punished following an investigation. It appears that he was tortured and sent to the standing cell in Block 11, where he died of hunger and thirst.