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 discusses suicide.

Freedland opens The Escape Artist by describing Walter Rosenberg (who takes on the name Rudolph Vrba after his escape) and his childhood friend Fred Wetzler’s daring escape from Auschwitz, a concentration and death camp complex operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland. The Schutzstaffel (SS) officers, or Adolf Hitler’s paramilitary organization, only guarded the outer part of the camp during the day when enslaved people labored. They did not watch it at night because they kept prisoners inside the inner camp surrounded by electrified wire fences and SS guards. The only exception to this practice was in the event that an inmate went missing. When this occurred, SS officers searched the area for 72 hours and kept guards in the outer camp. After 72 hours, the search stopped, and guards withdrew from the outer camp, leaving it unmanned. If a prisoner could therefore hide in the outer camp for 72 hours, they could escape.