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

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

Reviewed By  Nan van Dissel       July 24, 2022

 

Author  Jonathan Freedland

Distributor:      Hachette Australia
ISBN:                 9781529369052
Publisher:         Hachette Australia. Imprint John Murray.
Release Date:   July 2022  

Website:    https://www.hachette.com.au 

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Seventeen-year-old Slovakian Jew Walter Rosenberg, arrived in Auschwitz on a cattle truck packed only with those deemed fit enough to work as slaves; they became the inmates of the factory of death. With the aim of letting the world know what was actually happening at Auschwitz, on April 7th he and his compatriot, Fred Wetzler would become the first Jews to escape “the crowning achievement of Nazi extermination’.

In 1942 he was rounded up by the Nazis, then deported to Poland, next to a Slovak transit camp and finally winding up in Majdanek, before being transported to Auschwitz in June 1942. Despite the brutally inhumane treatment which he experienced, he dedicated his existence to gathering evidence of the Nazis depravity and deceit. His ultimate aim was to escape and warn the Jews what they could expect once they were deported to Auschwitz.

With a new identity as Rudolf Vrba, he and Fred Wetzler, created the detailed Vrba-Wetzler report, which, despite all their efforts took months for any one in power to act upon, but saved 200,000 lives; had it been acted upon earlier, hundreds of thousands of Jews would have survived.

After hiding in the wood pile for three nights, soaking wet with strips of flannel tightened across their mouths to muffle coughing, the two men set out on their journey to freedom. Using a stolen map, walking parallel to the Sola Rivers, they headed south towards Slovakia 130 kilometres away.

Although there was no organised help, members of the Polish underground did all that they could, which ultimately led the men to meet with members of the Slovak Jewish Council; the Vrbra-Wetzler report was born.

Readers will find this a powerful but difficult read, as author Jonathan Freedland does not hold back when describing the slaughter and unspeakable savagery of the Nazi machine; the horrors experienced by the victims of the Holocaust. Comprehensively researched and with meticulous attention to detail, this book is a serious addition to Holocaust literature.

Biographies, History, Non Fiction