Hidden in the Enemy's Sight: Resisting the Third Reich from Within by Jan Kamienski

Author:Jan Kamienski [Kamienski, Jan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2008-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

14 ANOTHER ESCAPE

When I woke up, it was the dawn of January 19. Nearby, Yakiv was still sitting on the stairs, wide awake and no longer hemmed in by anyone. He told me in whispers that many of the men had been led away by SS escorts, presumably to be incorporated into fighting units. The SS men would be back soon, he said, to get the rest of those who were able to bear arms. This would include us, we realized; we had to try to get out of Breslau. To leave the place by the front entrance was out of the question; the armed guard posted there would stop us. Yakiv went down to the ground floor to see if there was a rear exit. There was a back door, but for some reason it was boarded up. I explored the second floor and found that the landing I’d slept on led into a narrow corridor with a dust-covered, long-unwashed window that gave out onto a small courtyard. Moreover, this window could be opened wide enough to allow access to the sloping roof of a shed just outside. Since that roof was covered with a thick blanket of snow, it was a perfect way out. A squeeze through the open window, then a snow-cushioned fall onto the sloping roof, and finally a drop of maybe two metres to the ground presented no difficulty to us. We waited until we were certain there was no one around to witness our escape and found ourselves outside in no more than a minute.

Once again, we had to guess which direction to take and — once again — luck was with us. Looking up at the morning sky, we could determine where east was by the much lighter colour of the cloud cover. That meant, of course, that we had to move in the opposite direction. We knew that, on the previous evening, we had crossed the Oder River before arriving at the square from which we had made our first escape attempt. But now we were caught in a veritable maze of streets running every which way, leaving us only able to navigate by pure guesswork. We made very slow progress, walking cautiously and staying close to the buildings. The skies had cleared and the sun was up. This worked in our favour, because we could be seen less clearly when moving on the shady sides of the streets. Three or four times we managed to avoid being caught by slipping into the entrances of tenement houses. Some of these were of the old-fashioned kind, designed for driving horse-drawn carriages through to courtyards in which, in former days, there had been carriage sheds and horse stables. These courtyards also connected with the backs of houses on the other side, so one could escape through these buildings and reach another street. The snow now dampened our footfalls, and we could clearly hear the voices of patrols approaching from around corners. This gave us time to dash into the nearest doorway.

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