--- title: "This Holocaust survivor recounts his daring escape from Auschwitz" description: "Most of those who escaped the Auschwitz did so while they were out on a work detail. But escaping from inside was another story altogether." date: "2022-01-29" modified: "2022-01-29" authors: - name: "Blake Stilwell" job_title: "Editor-In-Chief, Air Force Veteran" link: "https://www.wearethemighty.com/authors/blake/" url: "https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/this-holocaust-survivor-recounts-his-daring-escape-from-auschwitz/" categories: - "History" - "War History" - "World War II" --- # This Holocaust survivor recounts his daring escape from Auschwitz ![]() Most of those who escaped the infamous extermination camp at Auschwitz did so [while they were out on a work detail](). --- But escaping from inside the camp's barbed wire was something altogether more difficult. The countryside around Auschwitz was fervently pro-Polish and anti-Nazi. The local population was willing to do whatever it took to aid an escapee. So the underground partisan movement in the local area and the camp resistance formed a partnership to help people escape. Auschwitz was part of a series of labor and extermination camps created by the Nazis in occupied Poland. Its first prisoners arrived in May 1940. In June, a Polish boy scout named Kazimierz Piechowski would be imprisoned in Auschwitz I. ![]() *Piechowski's Auschwitz prisoner photo.* [In a 2011 interview]() with The Guardian's [Homa Khaleeli](), Piechowski talked about his duties moving the corpses of executed prisoners. He got the work detail because he learned German as a boy scout. "The death wall was between blocks 10 and 11. They would line prisoners up and shoot them in the back of the head," he told Khaleeli. "Sometimes it was 20 a day, sometimes it was 100, sometimes it was more. Men, women and children." Only 19 when the Nazis occupied his hometown, Piechowski saw his young friends rounded up by German soldiers because of their scouting background. During a run for the Hungarian border he was captured and sent to Auschwitz. The concentration camp was so new, Piechowski was among those who helped build it. ![]() *The main gate at Auschwitz.* "Wake up, you buggers!" Piechowski screamed in German. "Open up or I'll open you up!" The guard did. The men drove to the town of Wadowice. All went their separate ways. Piechowski joined the nationalist partisan resistance movement and spent the rest of the war fighting Nazis. ![]() *A Steyr 220, the model of car the prisoners drove right out of the Auschwitz front gate.* In all, 196 prisoners made an escape from Auschwitz, [out of 928 attempts](). An estimated 1.1 million Jews, homosexuals, Slavs, Gypsies, and Polish political prisoners were killed in the Auschwitz camp complex. Kazimierz Piechowski survived the war, spent seven years in a Soviet gulag for joining the Polish Home Army. He toured to recount stories of his time in a Nazi death camp until his passing in 2017 at the age of 98. "I am a scout, so I have to do my duty – and be cheerful and merry. And I will be a scout to the end of my life," he told The Guardian. [Read the full interview]() at The Guardian's site. ## Author Blake Stilwell is We Are The Mighty's Editor-in-Chief, covering military news, entertainment, and history, along with veteran education, employment and entrepreneurship. He is a former U.S. Air Force combat cameraman with degrees in Graphic Design, Television and Film, International Relations, Public Relations, Business Management and Middle Eastern Affairs. After leaving the military, he began working in film and television production in New York and Los Angeles, work that included ABC News, NBC Olympics, and HBO Sports. He then spent two years in Washington with White House Communications, before joining the Near East Foundation. At NEF he served as an International Development Fellow, then Communications Officer, and finally, Media Officer for the Middle East and Africa. Based in the Palestinian Territory, he coordinated strategic communications between eight country offices, international media, and government and NGO partners. He began a career focused on writing and editing in 2015 with We Are The Mighty. He left in 2019 for Military.com, but returned as Editor-in-Chief in 2025. Blake’s work has been seen on CBS News, Fox News, CBC, The Chicago Tribune, Task & Purpose, Military Times, Recoil, Skillset, American History, and was shockingly even used in a Supreme Court argument. He is an avid traveler and small business owner in Ohio, where he spends most of his energy fixing up a very old house. ### Author social links [Facebook]() [Twitter]() [Instagram]() [LinkedIn]()