The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World

Product Information

The details of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the depravity and deceit of the Nazis were hard to read and will remain with me forever I think, but that’s as it should be. Lederer crossed the open ground outside the ghetto while the sentry was looking the other way and passed through a fence. At the end of it, Slovakian partisans and citizens helped the two escapees with new identities and hiding places. Despite the profound emotions brought about by this narrative, readers will also find an astounding story of heroism and courage in the face of seemingly hopeless circumstances.

It’s the first time I’ve read anything of that period written from a Russian’s point of view which ended up in the camps along with others who had been captured. Vrba and Wetzler manage to evade Nazi authorities looking for them and make contact with the Jewish council in Zilina, Slovakia, informing them about the truth of the unknown destination of Jewish deportees all across Europe. Rudolf Vrba deserves to take his place alongside Anne Frank, Oskar Schindler, and Primo Levi as one of the handful of individuals whose stories define our understanding of the Holocaust. It’s one of the first things we learn about Auschwitz, and one of the hardest to forget: that the Nazis tricked their victims before gassing them.Even the resistance members in the fire brigade opposed armed resistance, trusting the June 1944 Red Cross visit to ensure the survival of Theresienstadt's Jews. 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.

quote 2] Pestek also approached the Czech Josef Neumann (not a relative of Renée Neumann), [12] a kapo on the Leichenkommando, which was responsible for the disposal of corpses; Neumann refused.There is no evidence the report reached its destination, or even that Lederer sent it as he described. The report seems to have been an important factor in spurring the pope, Roosevelt and even his daughter-in-law to put pressure on Admiral Horthy, the regent of Hungary, to stop the deportations. but continues to ignore what he's just written and insists for the rest of the book that Vrba is the first Jew to escape from Auschwitz alive to warn the Jews and the world about Auschwitz.