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 by award-winning British author and journalist Jonathan Freedland tells the story of how 19-year-old Rudolph Vrba and his childhood friend Fred Wetzler escaped from Auschwitz, the concentration and death camp operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland. Rudi first arrived in Auschwitz on June 30, 1942, and immediately began plotting his escape. Rudi’s desire to escape was predicated on three beliefs. First, the outside world had no knowledge of Hitler’s death factory running at Auschwitz. Second, once the Allied powers knew about the death factory, they would act to stop the mass murders. Third, and most importantly, once the Jewish people knew the doomed fate that awaited them at Auschwitz, they would refuse to board the deportation trains. Rudi believed it was his mission to tell the world and his people about the horrors occurring at Auschwitz, shattering forever the deception and misinformation propagated by Nazi Germany. This intense desire to tell the world drove Rudi to meticulously commit to memory the number of Jewish people murdered during his time at Auschwitz. His escape was unprecedented (he and Fred were the first Jewish people to successfully escape), but he also had data he could use to inform the world.