 The Jewish prisoners in the camp were aware (having heard news reports from the BBC on covert radio sets) that whenever the Red Army liberated a Jewish slave-labor camp, they found all the inmates dead, having been shot by SS killing squads just before the Germans retreated.Thus many of the prisoners had been working on hiding places (called Malines) or escape plans in the months leading up to the summer of 1944.But they needed to know when the SS squads would arrive to exterminate the prisoners.