Escapes from Hell

EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK...

Time was passing desperately slowly. It seemed like an infinity: the first night, then all day, the next day, the next night. It wasn't until the third day that they responded to what they so desperately needed and wanted to hear: "Postenkette abziehn!" The outer circle of SS guards began to withdraw... Only then, at 9 p.m. on 10 April 1944, did Vrba and Wetzler proceed to the next point of their plan, which was the removal of the plank "ceiling" of their hiding place. It wasn't easy, and at one point they had the unpleasant thought that the hiding place would become their grave.

They didn't give up.

Again and again they tried to move the "ceiling", millimetre by millimetre, until finally there was a narrow gap where fingers could be inserted. Again they exerted all their strength and the barrier suddenly gave way. They looked up and the spring sky full of stars appeared above them in all its glory. It was cold, a sharp cold wind was blowing - and to the right, not far from them, smoke was rising to the sky from the chimneys of both crematoria. Hundreds or thousands of other human beings had therefore already made their last journey... After the two fugitives had emerged from their hiding place, from the perspective of the high pile of planks, they were almost overwhelmed by the extent of the terrible environment in which they had been forced to live until these moments, and from which they had decided to leave of their own free will. Thousands of electric lamps shone along the barbed wire fence: it was, to put it bluntly, a brightly lit hell...

 

Roman Cílek (* 1937)

He is one of the most experienced authors in the genre of revelatory and creatively conceived non-fiction. Born in České Budějovice, he has lived in Prague since his school days. He has published several dozen books not only of non-fiction, but also of dramatic fiction, many of which have won major awards, such as the Egon Ervin Kisch Prize, the Miroslav Ivanov Prize and the Jiří Marek Prize. Some of his works have also been published abroad, or have served as the basis for film adaptations. A film about the case of the multiple murderer Olga Hepnarová is currently being made based on Cílek's book (She Killed Because She Couldn't Live).

Roman Cílek is a co-founder and board member of two writers' organizations: Club of non-fiction authors and the Czech section of AIEP - international association of authors of detective and adventure genre. In recent years, Roman Cílek has become a core author of Epocha Publishing House. The result of this mutually stimulating collaboration are the books Mordcentral X (2004), Bloody Overture (2004), Everyone Who Carries a Spear... (2009). The author duo Miloslav Moulis († 2010) and Roman Cílek created for Epoch a unique work about the Nazi concentration camps entitled Forget that you were human... (2005), which was recently published in a second edition (2012). Cílek's creative relationship with the Magnetka edition is almost fatal. In 1966, he launched the edition with his work Projectiles in the Villa Edelweiss (filmed under the title Projectiles in Mariánské Lázně - 1969). In 2007, when this edition was renewed by the cooperation of Epocha Publishing House and the Prague Publishing Company, he was entrusted with this initial role again with the volume entitled Agony (2007). This was followed by co-authored titles with Miloslav Moulis: 100 Hours When the Republic Was Dying (2009) and Escapes from Hell (2010). In the same year, 2010, Cílek's book I, Otto Skorzeny...! in 2015, then I'll go to hell satisfied. Adolf Eichman: The life path of a mass murderer. Miloslav Moulis (1921-2010) In 1940 he was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. After the liberation, he worked as a journalist, in the Military Historical Archive, in the Office of the President of the Republic and in the Czechoslovak Republic.  Union of Freedom Fighters, and served on the board of the Non-Fiction Writers Club. He published a number of books on the Resistance and the Second World War, including: That was Buchenwald, The Invisible Front, A Life Full of Hate (with Dušan Tomášek), One hundred days at the height of power, Trains to nowhere, It is finished... (with Roman Cílek). However, he did not live to see the first edition of Escapes from Hell.