When an escaped prisoner was recaptured, he was led past the assembled prisoners, in Eicke’s presence if possible, wearing a large placard on which was written: “I am back.” In addition he was made to beat a large drum hung round his neck. After this parade he was given twenty-five strokes of the lash and assigned to the penal company.
The SS man who had found or recaptured him would be commended in daily orders and given special leave. Police employed outside the camp or civilians received a monetary award. If an SS man managed, by care and vigilance, to prevent an escape, Eicke gave him special leave and promotion.
Eicke insisted that absolutely everything be done to prevent escapes.
If a prisoner did succeed in escaping, he insisted that every possible measure be taken for his recapture.
Severe punishment was meted out to any SS man whose conduct had contributed to the escape, however slight the blame that could be attached to him.
Prisoners who had helped another to escape were punished even more severely.
I would like to give a description here of some unusual escapes.
Seven professional criminals, all of them tough young men, managed to tunnel under the wire which ran beside their barracks, and one night they escaped into the woods. They had put the waste earth from the tunnel under the barracks, which was raised on piles; the entrance to the tunnel was under a bed. They had worked at the tunnel for several nights without being noticed by their fellow prisoners. A week later one of the escaped men was recognized by a block leader in a Berlin street and arrested. Under interrogation he revealed where his comrades were hidden, with the result that they were all recaptured.
One of the homosexuals succeeded in escaping from the clay pit, despite the open nature of the country and the many sentry posts and wire entanglements. No clue could be found as to how the escape had been made. The outgoing trucks, filled with clay, were all checked personally by two SS men and the commanding officer of the work party. The search organization was set in motion and for days the nearby forests were combed, but without result. Just ten days later a teletype message was received from the frontier post at Warnemünde saying that the man had been brought in by fishermen. He was brought back to the camp and made to describe his escape. He had spent weeks preparing his flight, and had carefully considered all the possibilities. The only feasible one was the train that took the clay away from the pit. He worked hard and his industry was-noticed. He was given the job of greasing the trucks and looking after the tracks. For days on end he observed how the outgoing trains were controlled. Each truck was searched from top to bottom. The Diesel engine was examined as well, but he noticed that no one looked underneath it, for the guard plates reached almost to the rails. At the same time he noticed the rear guard plate hung quite loose. One day when the train stopped at the control point prior to it’s departure, he quickly crept under the engine and, hanging on between the two wheels, went off with it. At the first sharp curve, when the train reduced speed, he dropped between the rails. The train passed on over him. Then he vanished into the forest. He knew that he would have to head north. His escape had been rapidly discovered and the commanding officer of the work party had telephoned the alarm to the camp. The first action taken in such cases was to have the bridges guarded by motorized squads. When the prisoner reached the great Berlin-Stettin ship canal, he saw that the bridge was already guarded. He hid in a hollow tree from which he could keep a watch on the canal and the bridge. I myself had occasionally walked past this willow tree. When night fell, he swam the canal. He continued in a northerly direction, always avoiding roads and villages. He obtained civilian clothes from a workman’s hut in a sand pit. He lived on wild fruit and he milked the cows he found grazing in the meadows. Thus he managed to reach the Baltic by way of Mecklenburg. He had no difficulty in stealing a sailboat in a fishing village, and in this he sailed off toward Denmark. Shortly before reaching Danish territorial waters, he ran into a party of fishermen who recognized the boat. They at once suspected him as a runaway, detained him, and handed him over in Warnermünde.
A professional criminal from Berlin, a decorator by trade, worked in the houses occupied by the SS inside the ring of sentry posts. He had formed a liaison with a servant girl employed by a doctor and he repeatedly came to the doctor’s house where there was always work to be done. Neither the doctor nor his wife was aware of the intimate relationship between their maid and the prisoner. The doctor and his wife went away from time to time and, while they were away, the girl was given a holiday. This was the prisoner’s opportunity. The girl had left a window open in the cellar, and through this he climbed in after he had observed the departure of her employers. He removed a plank from one wall on the top floor and made a hiding place for himself in the attic. He bored a hole through the wooden outside wall and was thus able to observe most of the sentry posts and the SS encampment. He laid in a stock of food and drink, and a pistol against emergencies. When the alarm went, he crept into his hiding place, pulled a heavy piece of furniture against the place where the plank had been, and waited. When an escape was made, the houses in the SS encampment were also searched. I myself searched this very house on the day of the escape, for the fact that it was unoccupied had made me suspicious. I saw nothing unusual, however, even though I stood in the very room where the fugitive was crouched behind the wall with his pistol cocked. He said later that he would certainly have fired if he had been discovered. He was determined to gain his freedom at all costs, since an investigation was under way into his complicity in a robbery with murder that had happened some years before, and he had been betrayed out of homosexual jealousy by an accomplice in the camp. The sentries stood to for four days. On the fifth day he took the early morning train to Berlin. He had quite calmly taken his choice of the doctor’s wardrobe, and had made free with the contents of the larder and cellar, as the many empty liquor and wine bottles showed. He had filled two large suitcases with silver, linen, cameras, and other valuable articles. He took his time in deciding what he wanted. He was arrested a few days later in an obscure gin shop where, quite by chance, he was arrested by a police patrol in the act of converting the contents of his last suitcase into cash.
He had arranged to meet the servant girl, and she was sent to Ravensbrück.
The doctor was certainly surprised when he came back to his house. Eicke wanted to call him to account because of the pistol, but he let it pass when the doctor offered a large sum of money in compensation.
These are just three incidents that I can recall offhand, a small cross section of the richly varied life of a concentration camp.
If I remember correctly I became commander of the protective custody camp in Sachsenhausen about Christmas 1939.
In January 1940 a surprise visit from the Reichsführer SS resulted in a change of commandant.
Loritz arrived. He let it be understood that he intended to bring the camp, which according to the Reichsführer SS had become undisciplined, “back into line.” Loritz was well able to do this. As Rapportführer at Dachau in 1936, I had already taken part in a similar operation of his.
This was a bad time for me. Loritz was forever treading on my heels. The more so because my departure in 1938, to become adjutant to his most hated rival, had caused him considerable irritation. He assumed that I had organized my transfer behind his back. This was not so. The commandant of Sachsenhausen had asked for me because he had seen that I was being pushed into a dead-end job at Dachau, owing to my excessive loyalty to himself when he had been commander of the protective custody camp there.