Walter Rosenberg knew that escaping from the Auschwitz Concentration Camp was a crazy idea and probably impossible, but when he turned 18, he knew he should be the one to attempt it. Others had tried and failed. Even attempting to warn someone before their deaths resulted in one’s own death for breaking the deception the Nazi’s employed to efficiently usher their prisoners into the gas chambers.

“The factory of murder that the Nazis had constructed in this accursed place depended on one cardinal principle: that the people who came to Auschwitz did not know where they were going, or for what purpose. . . . The Nazis had devised a method that would operate like a well-run slaughterhouse rather than a shooting party.”

On April 7, 1944, he and Fred Wetzler acted on all of their preparations. The UK Guardian has their story.

“Walter understood that the Nazis wanted him and every other prisoner to conclude that escape was futile, that any attempt was doomed. But Walter drew a very different lesson. The danger came not from trying to escape, but from trying and failing.”