However, he was arrested at the border of Czechoslovakia and imprisoned in Nowy Sącz and Tarnów before being sent to Auschwitz I in the first prisoner transport to that concentration camp.

He was given prisoner number 564 under the name Jon Baraś, due to the forged identification papers he was carrying when arrested.

[3] On December 29, 1942, he escaped Auschwitz I with three other prisoners: Mieczysław Januszewski, Bolesław Kuczbara, and Otto Küsel.

During the last few years of World War II he was moved to Buchenwald, then to Gross-Rosen, Hersbruck and finally Dachau where he was liberated on April 29, 1945, by the United States Army.

[1][3] After the war, he lived in Displaced Persons camps in Bavaria and Munich, where he married another Auschwitz survivor.