From The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World, by Jonathan Freedland (HarperCollins, 2022), Kindle pp. 235-237:
Over a meal, Fred and Walter explained that they needed to meet whatever semblance of a Jewish community they could find: they needed to get word to them, urgently. Čanecký replied that the doctor in Čadca was a Jew by the name of Pollack.
That name rang an instant bell. Back in Nováky, there had been a Dr Pollack scheduled to be on the same transport that took Walter to Majdanek. And yet his name had been removed from the list at the last moment. It turned out that the authorities made a sudden exception for Jewish physicians, bowing to pressure from the Slovak public, especially in rural areas, who overnight found they had no medical care. Tiso had not reckoned with the fact that, though Jews made up only a small portion of Slovakia’s population, they accounted for a big share of the country’s doctors. The president reprieved those Jewish medics who had not already been deported, despatching them to small towns and villages. Given all that, it was wholly believable that the same Dr Pollack was in Čadca. And if he was, then that was the obvious place to start. They needed to get to Čadca immediately. Fred and Walter looked at each other: they should leave right away.
…
The farmer’s last good turn was to point the escapees in the direction of the doctor. His place of work was not what they were expecting or hoping for: Dr Pollack’s clinic was inside the local army barracks. Guarding the door were two soldiers of Slovakia’s pro-Nazi army. Since Walter was the one who knew Pollack, it would fall to him to walk past those men and pretend to be a patient. He girded himself and went in.
He found Pollack’s room and, as soon as he was inside, he saw that, yes, this doctor was the same man he had known in Nováky. Except he was not alone. There was a female nurse at the doctor’s side. Thinking on his feet, Walter said he had come about a ‘gentleman’s disease’ and would prefer it if the woman were to step out.
…
So he explained who he was and where he and the doctor had first met. And then he spoke about Auschwitz. He did it as briefly as he could; still, Pollack paled and began to tremble. Walter understood why. He, Walter, was an emissary from the grave. He was the first of the 60,000 Jews who had been deported from Slovakia between March and October 1942 – half of them to Auschwitz – to have returned to the country. He was bringing the dread news that, of all those thousands, only sixty-seven Slovak Jewish men were still alive in Auschwitz, along with 400 Slovak Jewish women.
‘Where are the rest?’ Pollack asked.
‘The rest are dead,’ Walter replied.
He explained that they had not been ‘resettled’, as those who stayed behind had been told and desperately wanted to believe. They had been murdered.
Pollack himself had been spared back in the spring of 1942, along with his wife and his children. But his parents, his brothers and sisters and their families had all been deported. The doctor had heard nothing from his relatives since 1942. They and the rest of the deportees had disappeared, leaving only silence. And yet Walter’s words still made the doctor shake. Because now he knew.
Collecting himself, Pollack asked what he could do. Now it was Walter’s turn to ask the questions. Was anything left of the organised Jewish community of Slovakia? Did any groups still exist, anything approaching a leadership?
The doctor answered that the ÚŽ, the Ústredňa Židov, the Jewish Centre, or council, in Bratislava, still functioned. It was the only Jewish organisation the regime permitted, tasked now with representing the 25,000 Jews like Pollack who had evaded deportation and lived on. But the ÚŽ had to work discreetly. The doctor could arrange a contact immediately. He then handed over an address where Walter and his friend could stay the night in Čadca: they would be under the roof of a Mrs Beck, apparently a relative of Leo Baeck, the eminent rabbi.
Far Outliers 