Heroic Coward

By Paul R. Bartrop, Professor Emeritus of History, Florida Gulf Coast University

Eighty years ago this month, in December 1943, a prisoner was sent to Auschwitz. While there was perhaps nothing surprising in that fact, there was something quite special about this prisoner.

Charles Joseph (“Charlie”) Coward was a British prisoner of war who became known as the “Count of Auschwitz” after he helped save the lives of at least 400 Jews working on slave labor details. His story from 80 years ago is unquestionably worthy of recollection.

Born in England in 1905, he enlisted in the British army in June 1937 and rose to become Quartermaster Battery Sergeant Major. On May 25, 1940, as German forces were sweeping all before them in France, Coward was captured during the unsuccessful British defense of Calais. He made two escape attempts before reaching a prisoner-of-war camp. While at the camp, he made numerous further escapes. On one occasion, while a prisoner of war on the run, he even received the Iron Cross while posing as a wounded German soldier in an army field hospital. He was recaptured on each occasion.

In December 1943, he was sent to Auschwitz III (Monowitz). Here, he was placed in the E715 labor detachment camp (administered by Stalag VIII-B), where British POWs were detained. Upon discovering that a fellow British prisoner was confined in the Jewish labor section of the camp, he smuggled himself into the camp, attempting to meet with this man and witness the conditions under which he was imprisoned. He could not locate the British POW but witnessed the gas chambers, malnutrition, cramped living quarters and SS treatment of the prisoners, and saw it as his humanitarian obligation from then on to resist the brutality confronting the Jews.

Due to his ability to speak German fluently, Coward was named as the Red Cross liaison officer for the British prisoners. Acting as their go-between with the guards, he used the limited freedom this provided to engage in resistance activities. He and other British prisoners smuggled food and assorted items to the Jewish inmates and, through coded letters, he smuggled reports to the British War Office regarding camp conditions and information he believed had military value. The information these letters contained was later used as evidence during the Nuremburg Trials. In addition, he witnessed the arrival of trainloads of Jews for extermination.

Coward’s greatest achievement at Auschwitz was liberating hundreds of Jews. British prisoners of war received packages containing Swiss chocolate from the International Red Cross, and Coward used these as a bargaining chip with the SS to obtain the corpses of dead non-Jewish prisoners. He had these placed in ditches along the paths Jewish slave laborers took to and from work. The Jews would slowly drop out of the group and hide in the ditches; Coward would swap their clothing and identities with the corpses and give the healthy Jews the documents and clothes he had taken from the corpses. They then adopted these as new identities and were smuggled out of the camp to freedom. It has been estimated that through this scheme, Charlie Coward saved up to 400 Jewish lives.

In December 1944, he was sent back to the main camp of Stalag VIII-B. He was finally liberated in January 1945, in Bavaria.

After his liberation, Coward remained active in his opposition to the Nazis. He acted as a witness during the I.G. Farben Trial at Nuremberg in 1948-1949 and attested to the sadistic treatment of Jews. In his court statement, he mentioned that during his imprisonment in the labor camp I.G. Farben, workers would openly admit they knew about the gassing and were fully aware what role they were playing in the war.

In 1954, British author John Castle published a biography of Coward, “The Password is Courage,” which recorded his wartime activities. This book was then made into a movie of the same name in 1962, directed by Andrew L. Stone. Portrayed by Dirk (later,Sir Dirk) Bogarde, Coward’s humanitarian efforts were recognized; however, as the film did not fully illustrate the terror of the Holocaust and the pain and suffering endured by the Jewish prisoners, it did not sufficiently acknowledge the fullness of Coward’s feats.

Charles Coward’s exploits were a product of his unwavering devotion to human life rather than his duty as a soldier. In 1963, in recognition of his nonviolent resistance during the war, he was named as one of the Righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. Then, after his death in 1976, the Department of the Righteous at Yad Vashem released a statement commemorating Coward’s righteous and brave actions as a humanitarian. He received appreciation and respect from his home country in 2010 when he was posthumously named a Hero of the Holocaust by the British government — a Holocaustrelated equivalent of a civic knighthood.

Author’s note

Pressure of work here in Australia has necessitated a reevaluation of my activities and I have decided that, after 13 years, I should retire from writing these monthly articles. I have been pleased to write for what I still consider to be "my" Jewish community so that I could add to the community's understanding of the universal nature of the Holocaust. My very best wishes going forward; I'll keep looking at the publication online, though no longer looking for my name and article!