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

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Jonathan Freedland’s conclusion that Rudolf Vrba deserves to ‘stand alongside Anne Frank, Oskar Schindler and Primo Levi in the first rank of stories that define the Shoah,’ is hard to argue with,” said Moffat. 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. One survivor described Pestek as "a decent person who never beat inmates" and Yehuda Bacon said he was "more humane" than other SS guards. Because he was a wounded soldier, Pestek was entitled to a long leave and requested it for 6 April 1944. This first-hand report alerted Western authorities, such as Pope Pius XII, Winston Churchill, and Franklin D.

It was my good fortune” are the opening words of Primo Levi’s memoir If This Is a Man, and good fortune is the chief reason Levi gave for his survival in Auschwitz. He was arrested a third time and imprisoned with other political prisoners at the Small Fortress of Theresienstadt. In November 1939 and again in November 1940, Lederer was arrested by the Gestapo for alleged resistance activity. Rabbi Leo Baeck, one of the leaders of the Jewish self-administration, had been informed by an anonymous escapee in August 1943.

That he should also have taken part in one of the few successful escapes makes his gripping narrative rare indeed.

It’s a brilliant insight — one that Rosenberg (later known as Rudolf Vrba, the false identity he took on after his escape) was ideally positioned to reach.

When transports of Jews arrived for extermination — some 1 million people between 1942 and 1944 — the SS reassured their victims with promises of food and a warm shower while marching them off to the gas chamber. And though his life was a series of escapes – from his name, country and marriage, as well as from Auschwitz – he stayed true to who he was, and to his mission to make the world face the truth about the Holocaust.