Joseph Granger

UWRT 1102
Wertz-Orbaugh
31 March 2015
From Gate Keepers to Gate Hoppers
Auschwitz is the home to one of the largest mass murders in history. Its name
makes people cringe and insecurely reflect on the horrors that occurred there. What made
it so ruthless and what went on in the camps questions that the inexperienced are
undoubtedly going to ask. As I read about Auschwitz, one of my biggest questions was
on the topic of the escapees themselves, their roles in the camp, and the success rate of
escape. We can never truly know what life was like during the holocaust, but what we
can do is understand the lessons that this unfortunate event has taught us. What angle do
people have to take in order to use it as a subject of study? There are countless hosts of
topics that can submerge any one who is curious into the research of Auschwitz.
Many testimonies give us the best mental images of what every day life was like
in Auschwitz, and many lead us to curiosity. In the article written by Philippe Bourgois, a
woman reflects on her findings while talking with her father, a holocaust survivor. The
daughter telling the story talks about his real role at the camp. He was not in the
extermination camp where Jews and the Gypsies were brutalized to death in the name of
racial hygiene (Bourgois). True or not, he was still a participant in the holocaust. He was
working as a forced laborer and housed with others alike due to the fleeing of Europeans
of unemployment in Nazi controlled Europe. According to the information given, he was
given enough food to survive and paid a wage with incentive bonuses (Bourgois). He is

ashamed to be in the same neighborhood of titles such as Holocaust survivor as he says in

this quote, "Compared to the people who were in the death camp, Auschwitz was a picnic
for us. I am almost ashamed to be in the same volume as real survivors, because the
horror of their lives was so much greater. (Bourgois). I firmly believe this is a very
honorable thing to say. He could be easily sympathized by all the attention he must get
from his experience, but he chooses not to relic in what the actual slave laborers
experienced.
I wanted to see what kind of people were in these camps, whether or not they
were all slave laborers, and what kind of background the prison population had. My main
topic of inquiry, however, is the security, namely the ability for a slave laborer to escape
the camp. It seems that a camp run by such methodical, detailed, and regulatory
organizations such as the Nazi military and the SS would be inescapable. After thorough
research my inquiry was ready to be dissected. Auschwitz, after functioning for five
years, recorded 667 slave laborers and other prisoners had escaped. Now, one must
understand that Auschwitz was not one fenced in building. It had up to seventeen
complexes within its realm. A total of 667 prisoners managed to escape from its
seventeen camps. Of them, 270 were caught and after interrogation, most of them were
executed. (Kulka 295). The prisoners were not completely cut off from the world
beyond the fences, word about the German armys recent losses allowed the prisoners to
see a glimpse of hope, while some thought this resonated to the strength of the Nazi
presence at Auschwitz and thought they could outsmart the guards.
Very few prisoners escaped hoping for a better place to live, a better camp to
work in, and better conditions, but some did escape for those reasons. The rest escaped

because they felt that they had no other way to survive. Many took the gamble and some
made it, but some faced the consequences. A strong majority of the prisoners had lived
extravagant lives as government employees, artists, or key jobholders in business which
made it easier to arrange plans for escape (Kulka 296). Another reason escape was not
out of reach was due to the Polish population at the camps.
Even though the Jews formed a decisive majority in the camp, 80 percent of the
privileged jobs in the prisoners self government, key jobs in hospitals and in
artisan work details were filled by Poles. This enabled them to initiate
conspiratory and resistance activities, to maintain contacts with the outside world,
and to prepare hiding places for would be Polish escapees. (Kulka 295).
The security at the camps was very tight and the entire camp ran through very
strict protocol. The camps had eyes everywhere you turned, they couldnt afford to let
anyone out of their sight.
From high transportable wooden watchtowers about 80 meters apart, the SS
guarded the prisoners in the restricted area, and fired without warning at any
prisoner who approached within 10 meters of the line of the outer cordon, the so
called large sentry chain. (Kulka 296).
This shows just how serious they were about keeping their prisoners in line. If
during roll call at the end of each day, the soldiers found someone to be missing, they
would immediately sound the sirens. As stated in the reading, If a prisoner were caught,
he was interrogated about the circumstances of his escape and his alleged accomplices.
(Kulka 296). The interrogation was usually followed by a transportation to a hard labor
camp, one of which people most surely died from exhaustion.

The camps that the Nazis had set up were seen as fortresses, keeping people in
while keeping the unwanted out. The camps had, at the time, some of the best security
measures seen, and one of the most feared special units, the SS. The Nazi military had
reported up to almost 700 escapees, proving that spending the rest of the war at the camps
was not inevitable. Although escape was out of the question for children, the elderly, and
some women, the testimonies that are available today represent a multitude of brave
people who got where they were through the help of others. Through hope, courage, and
determination, hundreds saw the smiling faces of their loved ones after finally reaching
the allied side.

Citations
Kulka, Erich Attempts by Jewish Escapees to Stop Mass Extermination Jewish Social
Studies Indiana University Press Vol. 47, No. 3/4, pp. 295-306 (1985). Web.

Bourgois, Philippe I. Missing the Holocaust: My Fathers Account of Auschwitz from

August 1953 to June 1944. Anthropological Quarterly 78.1 (2005): 89-123. Web.