On the night of 5 April 1944, Siegfried Lederer, a Czech Jew, escaped from the Auschwitz concentration camp wearing an SS-TV uniform provided by SS-Rottenführer Viktor Pestek.

Pestek accompanied Lederer out of the camp, and the two men traveled together to the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to obtain false documents for Neumann and her mother.

Lederer, a former Czechoslovak Army officer and member of the Czech resistance, tried unsuccessfully to warn the Jews at Theresienstadt Ghetto about the mass murders at Auschwitz.

Lederer returned to occupied Czechoslovakia, where he rejoined the resistance movement and attempted to smuggle a report on Auschwitz to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Switzerland.

[3] According to Lederer, he joined the Association of Friends of the Soviet Union, was influenced by Communist leader Marie Škardová,[note 1] helped those living in hiding, and distributed illegal publications.

[10] Deported to Auschwitz concentration camp on 18 December 1943, Lederer was forced to wear both yellow and red triangles, marking him as a Jew and a political prisoner.

[10] Viktor Pestek [cs, de] ((1924-04-18)18 April 1924 – (1944-10-08)8 October 1944) was born in Czernowitz, Bukovina—which was then Romanian territory—to a devoutly Catholic ethnic German family.

This humane treatment while in enemy hands was apparently what reawakened Pestek's Catholic faith and convinced him to oppose Germany's policies of genocide.

[19] Realizing he would have to act quickly to save Neumann's life, Pestek began to approach other prisoner functionaries and offer to help them escape.

After obtaining false documents in the Protectorate, Lederer and Pestek would return, impersonating SS officers, and present a forged Gestapo warrant for the arrest of Renée Neumann and her mother.

Before standing guard at the gate of the family camp on the night of 5 April, Pestek left a bicycle by Lederer's barracks as a signal for him to come out.

Pestek gave the correct passwords, telling the other guards Lederer was on special duty, and both men bicycled out of the front gate.

[28] At 11:30, SS-Sturmbannführer Friedrich Hartjenstein, the commandant of Auschwitz II-Birkenau, sent a telegram to the German police[note 3] notifying them that Lederer had escaped, probably disguised as an SS-Rottenführer.

[30] From Prague they went to Plzeň, where they hid with Josef Černík, a former Czechoslovak Army officer who had earlier helped Lederer find work.

[32] She also told them of Faltys, a Jew in hiding in Prague who could arrange the rest of the papers, including SS officer identification for Pestek and Lederer that would give them the authority to arrest Renée Neumann and her mother.

[35] Steiner, a German bank clerk named Ludwig Wallner whose Jewish sister-in-law had been deported to Auschwitz, and three others were indicted by the Nazi authorities for hiding Pestek and Lederer, and providing false papers for them.

Veselý told Lederer how to avoid the sentries, taking advantage of a security vulnerability around a hospital located outside the ghetto's perimeter.

[30] Lederer told Leo Holzer about what he had witnessed at Auschwitz, and according to his later testimony also informed Jirka Petschauer, the captain of the Jewish police inside the ghetto, and Otto Schliesser, a member of the Council of Elders.

[41] Explaining the reaction to the possibility of imminent death, Israeli historian and survivor Jakov Tsur stated that no one was capable of understanding Auschwitz until he or she had arrived and was undergoing selection.

[quote 3] Lederer made two or three trips into the ghetto in May, smuggling weapons and parts of a radio transmitter that he received from Josef Pokorný.

[47] Pestek and Lederer returned to Auschwitz between late April and June,[note 5] planning to rescue Renée Neumann, her mother, and Faltys' relative.

[52] In early June, Lederer attempted to smuggle a report on Auschwitz to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in neutral Switzerland.

Mrs. Werner introduced Lederer to the captain of a boat on Lake Constance, who agreed to smuggle the report across the border to Switzerland and send it to the ICRC.

[56] In November, he made his last visit to Theresienstadt, staying about eight days to compile a detailed report on the Small Fortress, the ghetto, and the Sudeten barracks to which the Germans had transferred the Reich Security Main Office archives in 1943.

According to Kárný, Lederer's role in the latter group, which during 1944 focused on sabotaging the Roderstein capacitor factory and a local Wehrmacht installation is unclear.

According to Austrian historian and Auschwitz survivor Hermann Langbein, his actions in particular indicate the limits of the absolute totalitarian hierarchy imposed by SS leaders.

[59] Langbein evaluates Pestek's actions more favorably than those of the guards who helped inmates escape during the evacuation of the camp in January 1945 in hopes of avoiding punishment for their crimes.

[60] According to psychologist Ruth Linn, Pestek may have helped Lederer in an attempt to distance himself from Nazi crimes because his home in Bukovina had been recently occupied by the advancing Red Army.

[61] Although described as "one of the most bizarre" escapes of World War II by historian Alan J. Levine,[62] Lederer's flight was overshadowed by that of Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler two days later,[63] which produced the Vrba–Wetzler report.

[64] Although some authors, including Levine,[52] have connected Lederer's report to the fact that the second liquidation of the family camp spared those able to work, Miroslav Kárný emphasizes that the decision was made due to the increasing labor shortage.