Editing Auschwitz concentration camp (section)

===Escapes, ''Auschwitz Protocols''{{anchor|escapes}}===
{{Further|Vrba-Wetzler report|Auschwitz Protocols}}
[[File:Telegram, Vrba and Wetzler escape, Auschwitz, 8 April 1944.jpg|thumb|upright|Telegram dated 8 April 1944 from ''KL Auschwitz'' reporting the escape of [[Rudolf Vrba]] and [[Alfréd Wetzler]]]]
From the first escape on 6 July 1940 of [[Tadeusz Wiejowski]], at least 802 prisoners (757 men and 45 women) tried to escape from the camp, according to Polish historian [[Henryk Świebocki]].<ref>For Wiejowski, {{harvnb|Świebocki|2000|p=194}}; for the rest, pp.&nbsp;232–233.</ref>{{efn|The escapees included 396 Polish men and 10 Polish women; 164 men from the Soviet Union (including 50 prisoners of war), and 15 women; 112 Jewish men and three Jewish women; 36 Romani/Sinti men and two women; 22 German men and nine women; 19 Czech men and four women; two Austrian men; one Yugoslav woman and one man; and 15 other men and one woman.{{sfn|Świebocki|2000|p=233}}}} He writes that most escapes were attempted from work sites outside the camp's perimeter fence.{{sfn|Świebocki|2000|p=192}} Of the 802 escapes, 144 were successful, 327 were caught, and the fate of 331 is unknown.{{sfn|Świebocki|2000|p=233}}

Four Polish prisoners—{{Interlanguage link|Eugeniusz Bendera|pl|Eugeniusz Bendera}} (serial number 8502), [[Kazimierz Piechowski]] (no.&nbsp;918), [[Stanisław Gustaw Jaster]] (no.&nbsp;6438), and Józef Lempart (no.&nbsp;3419)—escaped successfully on 20 June 1942. After breaking into a warehouse, three of them dressed as SS officers and stole rifles and an SS staff car, which they drove out of the camp with the fourth handcuffed as a prisoner. They wrote later to Rudolf Höss apologizing for the loss of the vehicle.<ref>{{harvnb|Czech|2000|p=150}}; also see {{cite news |last1=Khaleeli |first1=Homa |title=I escaped from Auschwitz |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/11/i-escaped-from-auschwitz |work=The Guardian |date=11 April 2011 |access-date=30 January 2019 |archive-date=14 April 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190414204937/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/11/i-escaped-from-auschwitz |url-status=live }}</ref> On 21 July 1944, Polish inmate [[Jerzy Bielecki (Auschwitz survivor)|Jerzy Bielecki]] dressed in an SS uniform and, using a faked pass, managed to cross the camp's gate with his Jewish girlfriend, Cyla Cybulska, pretending that she was wanted for questioning. Both survived the war. For having saved her, Bielecki was recognized by [[Yad Vashem]] as [[Righteous Among the Nations]].{{sfn|Świebocki|2000|pp=203–204}}<!--check: A common punishment for escape attempts was death by starvation; the families of successful escapees were sometimes arrested and interned in Auschwitz and prominently displayed to deter others. If someone did manage to escape, the SS picked ten people at random from the prisoner's block and starved them to death.{{sfn|Rees|2005|p=141}}-->

[[Jerzy Tabeau]] (no.&nbsp;27273, registered as Jerzy Wesołowski) and Roman Cieliczko (no.&nbsp;27089), both Polish prisoners, escaped on 19 November 1943; Tabeau made contact with the Polish underground and, between December 1943 and early 1944, wrote what became known as the ''Polish Major's report'' about the situation in the camp.{{sfn|Świebocki|2002|p=12–13, 23}} On 27 April 1944, [[Rudolf Vrba]] (no.&nbsp;44070) and [[Alfréd Wetzler]] (no.&nbsp;29162) escaped to Slovakia, carrying detailed information to the [[Slovak Jewish Council]] about the gas chambers. The distribution of the [[Vrba-Wetzler report]], and [[Rudolf Vrba#News coverage|publication of parts of it]] in June 1944, helped to halt the [[Holocaust in Hungary|deportation of Hungarian Jews]] to Auschwitz. On 27 May 1944, Arnost Rosin (no.&nbsp;29858) and [[Czesław Mordowicz]] (no.&nbsp;84216) also escaped to Slovakia; the Rosin-Mordowicz report was added to the Vrba-Wetzler and Tabeau reports to become what is known as the ''[[Auschwitz Protocols]]''.<ref>{{harvnb|Szabó|2011|p=94}}; {{harvnb|Fleming|2014|p=230}}.</ref> The reports were first published in their entirety in November 1944 by the United States [[War Refugee Board]] as ''The Extermination Camps of Auschwitz (Oświęcim) and Birkenau in Upper Silesia''.<ref>{{harvnb|Świebocki|2002|p=58}}; {{cite book |title=The Extermination Camps of Auschwitz (Oświęcim) and Birkenau in Upper Silesia |url=https://archive.org/details/USWRBGermanExterminationCampsAuschwitzAndBirkenau |publisher=War Refugee Board |date=26 November 1944}}</ref><!--work this in: Auschwitz plans originating with the Polish government were provided to the UK foreign ministry in August 1944.{{sfn|UK National Archives}}--><!--Not clear why these examples are here: On 24 June 1944, a Belgian-Polish Jew, [[Mala Zimetbaum]], escaped with her Polish boyfriend, Edek Galiński, dressed in a stolen prisoner-guard uniform. They were later recaptured, tortured, and executed by the SS.{{sfn|Gilbert|1987|pp=695–697}}-->