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

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Josef Plzák, who had known Lederer in the resistance, was arrested in June 1944 under suspicion of helping to hide him. Allied policy was inhibited by inertia and antisemitism (“In my opinion a disproportionate amount of time of the Office is wasted on dealing with these wailing Jews”, wrote someone in the Foreign Office in London). Vrba had three core beliefs about Auschwitz: that the outside world didn’t know about the “final solution”; that once they did know, the allies would intervene; and that once Jews knew, they would refuse to board those fateful trains. Evading the thousands of SS men hunting them, Vrba and Wetzler made the perilous journey on foot across Nazi-occupied Poland. These terms would dominate the life of Walter Rosenberg, a Slovakian Jew who along with three others would escape from Auschwitz in 1944.

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. What saddened and incensed me, as it did Rudi in his later life, was that if took weeks into months for anyone in power to act on the Vrba-Wetzler report. How this Russian man was able to survive was beyond extraordinary, with all the will power and a lot of luck he with other inmates managed to fool the Nazi and escape…not an easy task. These two books couldn’t be more opposite in purpose, but they both drive addictive page-turning with immersive narratives.Vrba helped save 200,000 Jewish lives—but he never stopped believing it could have been so many more. According to Czech historian Miroslav Kárný, Pestek decided against escaping with Neumann and her mother because of their lack of contacts in the Czech underground who could help him evade prosecution until the end of the war. Jews transported from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz between September 1943 and May 1944 were housed in a separate block at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, known as the Theresienstadt family camp. Every character turns out to be not who they appear to be, which author Joël Dicker pulls off with perfect puzzle-creating credibility.

His description of the escape and his subsequent journewy as a fugitive to the east, through the Carpathian mountains into the Ukraine, is unforgettable reading. And the kicker: when two other Jews also escape from Auschwitz and contact the Judenrat to confirm what Vrba and his friend Fred Wetzler bore witness to, Freedland dials up the "first and only" obsession to eleven and says that Vrba, Wetzler, Mordowicz, and Rosin are "the only four Jews on Earth to have escaped from Auschwitz. But he kept on running – from his past, from his home country, his adopted country, even from his own name. And yet too few heeded the warning that Vrba—then just nineteen years old—had risked everything to deliver.Among them were Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, who refused the offer because they believed it was a trick, and advised other prisoners not to trust Pestek. There have been fierce debates, in Israel and elsewhere, about how far Jewish wartime leaders, and particularly Rezső Kasztner in Hungary, helped facilitate the Nazi extermination programme by encouraging compliance rather than revolt.

Although he quickly developed a reputation for trading contraband, [12] he was disgusted by the mass killings at Auschwitz and by the contempt of some German SS members for Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans from outside Germany), [11] who comprised the majority of Auschwitz guards. According to Lederer, he joined the Association of Friends of the Soviet Union, was influenced by Communist leader Marie Škardová, [note 1] helped those living in hiding, and distributed illegal publications. SS men would sometimes reassure them or even joke with them right up to the doors of the gas chambers.Lederer said Pestek had left some valuables with a Polish girlfriend in Myslowitz and that she reported him when he tried to retrieve them. Eppstein, Baeck, and Holzer agreed the truth about Auschwitz must be kept strictly secret, lest a "catastrophe" befall the 35,000 prisoners at Theresienstadt at the time. He did it to reveal the truth of the death camp to the world—and to warn the last Jews of Europe what fate awaited them. Award-winning journalist and bestselling novelist Jonathan Freedland tells the astonishing true story of Rudolf Vrba, the man who broke out of Auschwitz to warn the world of a truth too few were willing to hear.

Realizing he would have to act quickly to save Neumann's life, Pestek began to approach other prisoner functionaries and offer to help them escape.

How this Russian man was able to survive a Nazi Death Camp was beyond extraordinary and to stay sane among such treachery and cruelty is amazing. With fascinating and at times breathtaking storytelling, Freeland recounts how it came about, detailing Vrba’s two-years in the camp between 1942 and 1944, during which he figured out its heinous purpose. He also fills out the story of Vrba’s life after the war, when some of the luck that had sustained him in Auschwitz ran out. Josef Neumann said he had been approached by an unknown SS man—probably Pestek—with an offer of escape.