On the night of 5 April 1944, 

Siegfried Lederer, a Czech Jew, escaped from the Auschwitz

concentration camp wearing an SS uniform provided by SS-Rottenführer Viktor Pestek.
Because of his Catholic faith and infatuation with Renée Neumann, a Jewish prisoner, Pestek
opposed the Holocaust. He accompanied Lederer out of the camp, and the two men traveled
together to the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to obtain false documents for Neumann and
her mother.
Lederer, a former Czechoslovak Army officer and member of the Czech resistance, tried
unsuccessfully to warn the Jews at Theresienstadt Ghetto about the mass murders at Auschwitz.
He and Pestek returned to Auschwitz in an attempt to rescue Neumann and her mother. Pestek
was arrested under disputed circumstances and later executed. Lederer returned to occupied
Czechoslovakia, where he rejoined the resistance movement and attempted to smuggle a report
on Auschwitz to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Switzerland. After the war he
remained in Czechoslovakia. The story of the escape was retold by Lederer and writers including
historian Erich Kulka.

Contents

 1Siegfried Lederer
 2Viktor Pestek
 3Auschwitz
o 3.1Background
o 3.2Escape
 4Aftermath
o 4.1Obtaining false papers
o 4.2Breaking into Theresienstadt
o 4.3Return to Auschwitz
o 4.4Smuggling a report to Switzerland
o 4.5Afterwards
 5Assessment
 6Notes
o 6.1Original quotes
 7References
o 7.1Print sources
o 7.2Web sources
 8External links

Siegfried Lederer[edit]

A room in the Small Fortress

Siegfried Lederer [cs] or Vítězslav Lederer (6 March 1904 – 5 April 1972) was born to a Jewish
family in Písařova Vesce [cs; de] in the Sudetenland, the German-speaking part of
Czechoslovakia.[1][2] After the Sudetenland was annexed to Germany in 1938, he moved
to Plzeň and worked manual jobs, including agricultural work and a stint in a kaolin factory.
[3]
 According to Lederer, he joined the Association of Friends of the Soviet Union, was influenced
by Communist leader Marie Škardová,[note 1] helped those living in hiding, and distributed illegal
publications. Lederer also said that he was a member of the resistance group named
after Lieutenant Colonel Jaroslav Weidmann. Later, Lederer joined Plzeňák 28, a Czech
resistance group in Zbraslav so called because it had twenty-eight members, including Josef
Pokorný, commander of the Zbraslav gendarmerie.[5]
In November 1939 and again in November 1940, Lederer was arrested by the Gestapo for
alleged resistance activity. On both occasions, he was quickly released because of a lack of
evidence.[5][6] He was arrested a third time and imprisoned with other political prisoners at
the Small Fortress of Theresienstadt. On 18 January 1942, he was transferred to the adjacent
Jewish ghetto, and was supposed to be deported on the next transport. [7] Leo Holzer, the leader
of the ghetto fire brigade—a hotbed of resistance[note 2]—heard about Lederer's resistance activities
and postponed his deportation by recruiting him into the fire brigade. [7] Lederer later claimed that
he had maintained contact with the Plzeňák 28 while at Theresienstadt, but survivors of that
group testified that they had heard nothing from him until his escape. [9] He was dismissed from
the fire brigade and lost his protection from deportation because he was caught smoking.
[10]
 Deported to Auschwitz concentration camp on 18 December 1943, Lederer was forced to
wear both yellow and red triangles, marking him as a Jew and a political prisoner. [2] There is no
evidence that he was involved in the Auschwitz resistance movement.[10]

Viktor Pestek[edit]
Viktor Pestek [cs, de] (18 April 1924 – 8 October 1944) was born in Czernowitz, Bukovina—
which was then part of Romania—to a devoutly Catholic ethnic German family.[10][11] Auschwitz
guard Stefan Baretzki grew up in the same town; he and Pestek were acquaintances as children.
Pestek, whose father was a blacksmith and a small farmer, learned these trades as a young
man.[11] He joined the Waffen-SS,[10] either because of his innate sense of adventure, [12] or because
his mother persuaded him to join.[11] During his service, Pestek was involved in anti-partisan
warfare near Minsk, Belarus. His unit was ordered to attack a village suspected of containing
partisans and to kill the inhabitants. When Soviet partisans opened fire at the Germans, Pestek
was wounded in the arm and leg. Separated from his unit, he hid in a barn with another wounded
SS man named Werner.[10][11]
After Werner died of his injuries, Pestek was discovered by partisans who spared his life despite
the SS killings in the village. The humanity of his enemy apparently reawakened Pestek's
Catholic faith and brought him into conflict with the genocidal German policies. [13] According to
Siegfried Lederer, Pestek later said of this incident: "I was a murderer, and a Soviet partisan
spared my life anyway".[quote 1] Upon his return to a German-controlled area, he had lost the use of
his hand.[14] Found unfit for front-line service, he was posted to Auschwitz concentration camp as
a guard. Pestek was a Rottenführer, a junior non-commissioned rank in the SS.[11]

Auschwitz[edit]
Background[edit]
Further information: Theresienstadt family camp
BIId (pink) and BIIb (orange) highlighted on an aerial photograph of Birkenau.

Jews transported from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz between September 1943 and May 1944
were housed in a separate block at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, known as the Theresienstadt family
camp. They were not subject to selection upon arrival, were allowed to retain their civilian
clothes, and were not forced to shave their heads. Families were allowed to stay together and
write to their friends and relatives in an attempt to mislead the outside world about the Final
Solution. The Nazis, however, were planning to kill each group of prisoners six months after their
arrival.[15][16]
Pestek was initially appointed the supervisor of section BIId of Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Although
he quickly developed a reputation for trading contraband, [12] he was disgusted by the mass killings
at Auschwitz and by the contempt of some German SS members for Volksdeutsche (ethnic
Germans),[11] who comprised the majority of Auschwitz guards.[17] Some SS men formed
relationships with Jewish women in the family camp because, unlike other prisoners, they had
been allowed to keep their hair.[16] Pestek fell in love with Renée Neumann, a Czech Jewish
prisoner at the family camp, although she did not return his affection. He arranged for Neumann
to get a job as a block clerk and offered to help her escape by disguising her as an SS woman.
This was unsuccessful, partly because Neumann was unwilling to leave her mother. [11] According
to Czech historian Miroslav Kárný, Pestek decided against escaping with Neumann and her
mother because of their lack of contacts in the Czech underground who could help him evade
prosecution until the end of the war.[14]
On 8 March 1944, exactly six months from their arrival, the Jews from the family camp who had
arrived in September were all gassed without a selection to find those able to work.[10][18] Pestek
rescued Neumann and her mother by temporarily moving them to a different block. [12] Lederer
was appointed block elder (Blockältester) of Block 14 within the family camp later that month.
Alfred Cierer, a Czech Jewish industrialist, and his son Jakov Tsur moved in because they knew
Lederer.[19] Realizing he would have to act quickly to save Neumann's life, Pestek began to
approach other prisoner functionaries and offer to help them escape. [2][12] Among them
were Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, who refused the offer because they believed it was a trick,
and advised other prisoners not to trust Pestek. Previously, an SS man named Dobrovolný—an
ethnic German from Slovakia—had met a Jewish childhood friend at Auschwitz. Dobrovolný
offered to help him escape but then turned him in, resulting in his brutal execution and a bonus
for the SS man. This and similar incidents persuaded Vrba, Wetzler and other prisoners that
guards could not be trusted under any circumstances. [2][20][21] According to Wetzler, Pestek told
him, "I hate myself for having to watch women and children be killed. I want to do something to
forget the smell of burning human flesh and feel a little cleaner." [quote 2] Pestek also approached the
Czech Josef Neumann (not a relative of Renée Neumann), [12] a kapo on the Leichenkommando,
which was responsible for the disposal of corpses; Neumann refused. [14]