Throughout the Second World War, there were many prisoners who dreamed of trying to escape
concentration camps to evade their imminent deaths and demises.
Very few attempted to escape as they knew that the likelihood was that they would be
captured and immediately executed.
The SS guards viewed escapees with distain and often whole barracks would be punished
if someone fled the site.
There were accounts of scores of executions being carried out in reprisal for one person
being unaccounted for, or whole barracks were forced to stand in the freezing cold for hours
until they returned which could cause death by hypothermia.
But there was one man who managed to escape Auschwitz the deadliest concentration camp
with the incredible help of an SS guard, but shockingly he was executed for his aiding
in helping others escape.
Join us today as we look at the story of Viktor Pesktek’s actions in helping Siegfried Lederer
escape from Auschwitz, and as always to support our channel please make sure to subscribe.
Siegfried Lederer was a Jewish man born in the Sudetenland, the German speaking part
of Czechoslovakia, and following the German annexation of the area in 1938 he moved to
Plzen where he worked a number of jobs.
He joined a communist group, and he helped many people who were living in hiding and
he helped to distribute banned communist propaganda.
Siegfried was also a member of the resistance groups in the area, and he greatly opposed
the Nazi occupation and the persecution which was occurring.
He was arrested a number of times, but was quickly released by the Gestapo due to a lack
of evidence they had.
However for a third time he was arrested and imprisoned inside the Small Fortress of Theresienstadt
with other political prisoners.
On the 18th January 1942 he was transferred to the jewish ghetto to await his transport,
but the Leader of the ghetto’s fire brigade who was part of the resistance there heard
about Lederer’s actions before.
This postponed his deportation as he was recruited into the fire brigade, but he was later sacked
from this as he was caught smoking.
This meant he could then be deported as he lost any protection he had, and he was deported
to Auschwitz on the 18th December 1943 and was forced to wear yellow and red triangles
on his uniform, showing he was Jewish but also a political prisoner.
But when arriving at Auschwitz, Jews who were transported from Theresienstadt were kept
in a separate block of Auschwitz II.
They were not selected upon arrival and were not subjected to the life and death decisions
made by the Evil guards and the SS, and with this were allowed to also keep their civilian
clothes.
They also did not have to have their heads shaved, and families could stay together,
however the Nazis planned to kill the groups of prisoners 6 months after they arrived there.
But one man who worked at the camp as an SS guard was Viktor Pestek, who was a from a
devout Catholic German family.
He was a blacksmith and farmer, but he then joined the Waffen-SS as he was persuaded to
do so by his mother.
But as he served in the group, he was involved in anti partisan missions in Belarus, and
his unit attacked a village suspected of housing partisans, and they were then ordered to kill
the inhabitants of the village.
But the Partisans then attacked the Germans and Pestek was injured in the arm and leg,
and he was broken up from his unit and he hid in a barn with another SS man who was
wounded.
This man died from his injuries and Pestek somehow was spared despite the SS atrocities
in the village.
The kindness shown by those towards him in sparing his life led to Pestek becoming conflicted
about the Nazi policies, and Pestek claimed he was later a ‘killer and a Soviet Partisan
spared my life,’ but as he lost the use of his hand he was deemed unfit for service
with the SS and was then placed inside of Auschwitz to work as a guard there, and he
was a Rotten-fuhrer which was considered a junior NCO.
But Viktor Pestek was appointed the supervisor of Section B2d of Birkenau, and he was a guard
who would trade with prisoners and exchange banned items for money.
But he was also known for being a man who hated the mass killings that occurred there,
and he hated many of the other SS members and the guards there.
But some SS men had during the camps operation entered relationships with the Jewish women
inside the Theresienstadt family camp, attracted to their long hair that they kept.
Viktor Pestek was one of these, and he fell in love with a Czech jewish woman named Renee
Neumann, but she did not love him back.
He arranged for her to have better traininment, and offered to get her a job as a block clerk,
and he also offered to disguise her as an SS woman and help her escape.
But Renee did not want to leave her mother at the camp, and Pestek then decided against
fleeing with her mother as they didn’t have many links to the Czech underground who could
help them evade capture until the Second World War came to an end.
6 months after the Jews from the family camp had arrived, they were all gassed without
a selection which chose who would live and who would die.
But Petesk mange to rescue Renee and her mother by moving them to a different block.
But Siegfried Lederer was then became a camp elder of Block 14, and Viktor Pestek the SS
guard approached Lederer to ask for help in sheltering Renee.
Some others initially refused to help believing it was a trick, as an SS man named Dobrovolny
had offered to help shelter one of his jewish childhood friends, but when a camp elder agreed
to help, he was executed and the SS man was given a cash bonus.
Prisoners could not trust any guards, but Pestek said ‘I hate myself for having to
watch women and children be killed, I want to do something to forget the smell of burning
flesh, and feel a little cleaner.’
But the SS guard eventually came into contact with Siegfried Lederer, and and the pair planned
their escape and the return that would rescue Renee Neumann.
Lederer would leave in disguise as an SS man, and he would later get back to Czechoslovakia
where he would get false papers, and then they would return impersonating SS officers
and present a false Gestapo warrant for Neumann.
With this they would be then provided with a car and driver who would be shot en route
to the Gestapo station.
Following the dumping of his body, they would then get on a train back to Czechoslovakia.
Viktor Pestek stole an SS uniform, a pistol and paybook for Lederer and hid them, and
then on the night of the 5th April 1944 he left a bicycle by Lederer’s barracks.
This was the signal for him to come out, and the pair then dressed as SS guards would manage
to bicycle out the front gate.
They got on the train at the railway station outside of Auschwitz heading to Prague.
But the Commandant of Auschwitz Birkenau would then issue a telegram to the Police to look
out for Lederer who was probably dressed as an SS Rottenfuhrer.
Pestek was also under suspicion for helping the escape, but they managed to get to Prague.
The pair sold jewellery and brought civilian clothes, and they then travelled to Plzen
where they hid with a former Czech army officer.
The police were hunting for Lederer, but they were then given false papers, and a number
helped Lederer hide out.
But shockingly Siegfried Lederer would visit the Theresienstadt ghetto a number of times.
He would go back and tell of the gassings at Auschwitz, and he told what he had witnessed.
Many of the inmates of the ghetto already knew what a deportation to the camp would
bring, but Lederer then managed to smuggle weapons and a radio transmitted out of the
camp.
However shockingly Pestek and Lederer would then return to Auschwitz.
They returned and planned to rescue Renee Neumann and her mother.
However it is known that the SS managed to arrest the SS guard Pestek and that Lederer
escaped capture.
It’s not entirely know how he was captured, but Pestek was handcuffed and was brought
into Auschwitz where he was interrogated and then subject to horrific torture inside of
Block 11 like so many other prisoners were.
Many of the SS guards set upon Pestek and beat him badly, and some claimed he was caught
by Kapos around the woods in the camp.
However he gave his plans up to save Renee Neumann and her mother, but he was sentenced
to death in Kattowicz.
Facing a firing squad for Favouring Inmates and Desertion, he was brought into a small
village where an SS firing squad shot through him with the members of his former unit witnessing
what happened.
Surprisingly Renee Neumann and her mother managed to survive the war, possibly because
of Viktor Pestek’s actions.
However Siegfried Lederer tried to continue to spread information about Auschwitz and
what was happening.
But after his escape he managed to link up with a Partisan group, and he fought in the
Slovak national uprising.
He continued to take part in other partisan resistance activities, and he managed to live
out the war, dying in Prague in 1972 at the age of 68.
Viktor Pestek was one of only a couple of guards at Auschwitz that risked his live to
help prisoners escape.
He was a man who quite clearly had come dissident to the Nazi cause following the crimes what
he had seen, and also how he had been spared by others.
Camp prisoners described him as ‘a decent person who never beat inmates,’ and said
he was more humane than other guards.
But along with Siegfried Lederer, the escape of the pair from the deadliest concentration
camp of the Second World War was a captivating and brilliant story, however tragically it
resulted in the brutal execution of Viktor Pestek, but he gave his life to try and save
others.
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