In 1943, four gas chambers were operating simultaneously at Auschwitz, and five crematoria burned thousands of corpses every single day. In 1944, the "death factory" was running at an even faster pace.
In the spring of 1944, we felt in the camp that the Allied fronts were drawing closer, and at the same time the mass extermination of Hungarian Jewry began. After much deliberation, and since all hope of surviving in the camp had faded, escape seemed the only way to save oneself – I decided that the time had come to attempt a breakout.
I made contact in the camp with a Pole, Mieczyslaw Paluch, and with a Russian prisoner of war, Nikolai Tarasov, who worked in a nearby kommando. Together we began to plan an escape. The Pole was brought into the escape plan because he promised that relatives in a village near his hometown might shelter us.
At that time, prisoners escaped every month. In general, escaping from Birkenau was difficult and dangerous.
On the day we had set for the escape, we exchanged our prisoner uniforms for civilian clothes and drank strong liquor to give us courage – and also to support our cover story of being drunk, in case we were caught. In the midst of the preparations for the escape, a fellow townsman of mine crossed my path. As I passed him, I whispered: "If you hear an alarm signal tonight, you will know that I have escaped."
In the afternoon hours we slipped out of the camp. We climbed into a pit, and a friend covered us with a sheet of metal, scattered dirt over the metal, and sprinkled tobacco on it, so that the SS tracker dogs would not be able to sniff out our presence there.
We heard the alarm sirens announcing throughout the camp that prisoners were being searched for. We heard the barking of the tracker dogs above us. We held our breath and dared not bat an eyelid, lest they hear us. Yet our situation was unbearable. The pit was small, and apparently its ventilation openings had become blocked, and we could not remain in it.
"I am suffocating," whispered the Pole – and the expression of that feeling, spoken aloud, had an infectious effect on the Russian and on me. Within a short while we knew that we could not extend our stay in this hiding pit until the end of the alarm period – 72 hours.
At approximately 1 o’clock at night, after silence had settled over the area, we decided – following an agonized, whispered deliberation – to leave the hiding place that very night and continue on our way, since we estimated that we could not hold out even one day in that pit.
Slowly and very carefully, making no sound, we removed the cover from the mouth of the pit in which we were crammed. We crawled out on our stomachs and began advancing with held breath across the open ground. We managed to pass the watchtowers, rose to our feet, and broke into a run.
We ran approximately 18 kilometers and reached, under cover of darkness, the bridge over the Vistula River.
In later years we learned that immediately after news of our escape became known, the SS personnel of the camp sent a telegram to the Security Service in Berlin. I found a photograph of the original telegram in the Auschwitz archives:

"30.6.44. Auschwitz. To the Security Service in Berlin.
1. Mieczyslaw Paluch, born 14.1.1910. Last pre-war address… Height 1.65 m, brown hair, close-cropped, Polish-speaking, brown eyes. Number 150498.
2. Avraham Fridberg, Israel, Jewish. Born 4.2.24. Brought from Pruzhany on 2.2.43. Height 1.65 m, brown hair, close-cropped, Polish-speaking. Brown eyes. Number 99288.
3. Prisoner of war, Russian, Nikolai Tarasov, born 17.1.10 in Saratov. Captured on 24.2.44 and transferred from Stalag 336. Height 1.71 m, brown hair, close-cropped, Russian-speaking, gray eyes. Personal number…
The above fled on 29.6.44. Paluch and Fridberg from the Kartoffel kommando. Tarasov from the Gleisanschluss kommando."
After we were caught, we were held in the punishment cell of the Political Department, and interrogations began. In particular, they wanted to know where the third man who had escaped with us was.
For weeks, the interrogators of the Political Department – headed by the notorious murderer Boger – did not let up on us.
The interrogator’s secretary, a Jewish female prisoner from Slovakia named Katya, was of great help to us, and perhaps even saved our lives.
When the interrogator stepped out of the interrogation room for a moment, she hurried to whisper to us: "You must stick to your version, no matter what. Let us hope that the escaping Russian prisoner will not be caught and give a different version."
The Russian was not caught, and we did indeed stick to our version, and therefore we were not sentenced to death. We were sentenced to serve in a punishment squad for the rest of our lives, and at the evening roll call we were seated on the special stretching chair, before all the camp inmates, our sentence was read out – "for the crime of attempted escape" – and we each received 25 lashes with a dreadful leather whip on our bare buttocks. After that ration of lashes I was unable to sit for several weeks.
I found myself once again in the punishment block – Block 11 in Birkenau. This time with a round red patch – as a dangerous criminal.
In October 1944, the Russian front drew closer to the area where the death camps were located, and the Germans decided to evacuate the prisoners of Auschwitz-Birkenau and transfer them to Buchenwald – farther from the Eastern front.
That transport carried more than 10,000 prisoners. It was one of the largest transports ever taken out of these camps. Since so many people were being taken out, we – the members of the punishment squad – managed to blend in among the other prisoners. We removed the red patches from our prison garments and were equal to the regular prisoners. We passed through various camps along the way: Oranienburg, where the Heinkel aircraft factory was located; Sachsenhausen, where we met many Jews whose skills the Germans exploited for forging documents, and passports in particular; a new camp named Ohrdruf, near Gotha; and Grönink, where they were tunneling into a mountain to build the Führer’s new headquarters. Administratively, that camp was subordinate to Buchenwald.
After approximately two months in the new camp, in November or December 1944, the Germans decided to evacuate us again and return us to Buchenwald, as the front was closing in. Apparently there were no trains available. Therefore we walked on foot – some ten thousand prisoners – approximately 50 km. Whoever fell behind was shot dead by the roadside. We walked for several days. At night we slept in the open. Many arrived at Buchenwald on their last strength.