A Daring Escape from Auschwitz
During the Holocaust, the systematic tattooing of prisoner numbers on the forearms of inmates was only done at Auschwitz. The practice was implemented due to an audacious escape on the last day of spring in 1942.
The history of tattooing the incarcerated during the Holocaust is not well documented, but it has since come to symbolize the brutality of the concentration camps and the dehumanization of Jewish people. For those who survived, their tattoos remain a symbol of resilience in the face of unspeakable terror.
In early 1942, tattooing of prisoners was not common practice at Auschwitz, but then Kazimierz Piechowski said fuck this place I’m outta here, smuggling out a report detailing the horrors of Auschwitz in the process. Piechowski was not imprisoned for being Jewish, but rather was a political prisoner.
He was a natural shit disturber, being involved in Polish resistance to the fucking Nazis from the beginning; he was captured while endeavoring to escape to France to join the Polish Army in exile to continue the fight against the German occupation of his homeland. He was eventually imprisoned in Auschwitz, which would become the fucking Nazi’s largest death camp, on June 20, 1940. Exactly two years later, he and three others made a daring escape.
Piechowski was given the grisly task of carrying murdered Jews to the crematorium. The SS guards were so cavalier about committing murder, he later explained, that they would kill prisoners just to get a few days off. “They would take off a prisoner’s cap and throw it away,” Piechowski said. Then the fucking Nazi would order the prisoner to fetch it and they would be shot. “They would claim the prisoner was trying to escape and get three days off for foiling it.”
The man well knew the price for a failed escape attempt, and decided to try anyway after seeing an execution list with his friend’s name, Eugeniusz Bendera, on it. Bendera was a mechanic and had access to camp vehicles. They hatched a plan, along with two cellmates, to steal a car and Nazi uniforms and drive to freedom.
On the morning of June 20, 1942, the four men pushed a garbage cart out the first gate, the infamous one that said “ARBEIT MACHT FREI” above it, which is German for “Work sets you free.” They weren’t on a list saying they had permission to go through the gate, but the guard didn’t check. Then three of them climbed through a warehouse coal hatch while Bendera made for the motor pool. Inside the warehouse, Piechowski and his two cellmates took the uniforms along with submachine guns and grenades. Bendera met them driving a Steyr 220 sedan, the fastest vehicle in the camp, belonging to commandant Rudolph Höss.
They climbed in and drove to the perimeter gate, which was closed. They kept hoping the guards would see the car and open up, but they did not.
Piechowski spoke the best German. Sitting in the passenger seat and wearing a lieutenant’s uniform, he partially climbed out of the vehicle so the guards could see his rank insignia and yelled at the fucking Nazis manning the gate. “Wake up, you buggers!” he yelled in an authoritative voice that did not betray his fear. “Open up or I’ll open you up!” Death camp Nazis were all about “just following orders,” and they followed these orders.
The four men sped to freedom.
They abandoned the vehicle approximately forty miles later, escaping on foot into the forest. One of the escapees, Gustaw Jaster, carried with him a report made by Witold Pilecki that detailed the horrors of Auschwitz for a world still unknowing. Pilecki was a Polish cavalry officer and intelligence agent who had allowed himself to be captured and imprisoned in Auschwitz in order to document the inhumanity of what the Nazis were doing. The report was sent on to London, but the Allies didn’t believe it.
“A month after we escaped, an order went out that every person must be tattooed,” Piechowski said in an interview years later. “No other camp used numbering—it was our escape that led to it.”
Jaster’s parents were arrested in retribution for his escape; they died in Auschwitz. Piechowski fought with the Polish resistance until the end of the war, but after the war the “liberating” Soviets said this fucker is too anti-communist for our liking, and threw him into prison for the next seven years as an “enemy of the state” he had fought to free from the murderous Nazis fuckwipes.
After getting out of prison he became an engineer. When the communist regime finally fell in 1989, he left Poland to travel the world with his wife, frequently sharing his story with others so that the inhumanity of the Holocaust would not be forgotten. Kazimierz Piechowski lived to the age of ninety-eight.
Over a million people were murdered at Auschwitz, most of them Jews. Fewer that 200 successfully escaped the death camp during its operation.
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Incomprehensible to me and my generation that anyone living and past the age of 10 doesn’t know what the holocaust was. We gave our son Maus when he was about that age. We later gifted a set to our youngest. While I grew up knowing about Nazis from my dad I also knew from the kids in my block, two mothers had prison camp tattoos on. A frail polish Catholic woman who married a GI. The other a Jewish woman, the mother of a boy in love with my older sister, and whose father was a journalist.
We were raised to understand that there were those among us in our own society who not only didn’t care if we lived or died (looking at “compassionate conservatives” who vote against Obamacare, or child tax credits)(Cheney among them), but some who actively seek to harm fellow humans.
Thank you for sharing this history. My country is scaring the shit out of me. My biggest worry is that people have become numb to what's going on here and won't vote. We have to VOTE BLUE, NO MATTER WHO!!!!!