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

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of genocide; starvation; systematic, state-sponsored violence and persecution; and antisemitism perpetrated by Germany and its collaborators during the Holocaust. This section also mentions suicide.

Freedland (born 1967) is a British journalist who writes a weekly column for The Guardian and hosts The Guardian’s Politics Weekly America Podcast. Under the pseudonym Sam Bourne, Freedland writes thrillers. Freedland, who is himself Jewish, first encountered Rudi through the Holocaust documentary called Shoah in 1986. He writes, “I never forgot his name or his face, even though, over the decades, I would be struck by how few others had heard of him” (xi). Freedland began to examine Rudi’s life at the start of the pandemic as he observed a move into a post-truth era characterized by misinformation and deception. Freedland was struck by Rudi’s heroism. Rudi risked his life to shatter the Nazis’ web of lies in the hopes of saving his people from mass murder. To Freedland, Rudi’s story is a reminder that people have the power to fight back against hatred, antisemitism, and misinformation and deception.

Freedland combines the thriller form with journalistic detail to tell Rudi’s story.