The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World (about Rudolf Vrba)

Name: The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World (about Rudolf Vrba)
Author: Jonathan Freedland
ISBN: 9780063112377

Jonathan Freedland

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Jonathan Freedland

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#2459 of 3,809 books · #890 in Biography & Memoir

Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction (2022).

The Escape Artist won the National Jewish Book Award and was a New York Times Bestseller. A complex hero. A forgotten story. The first witness to reveal the full truth of the Holocaust . . . 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. In April 1944, Rudolf Vrba became one of the very first Jews to escape from Auschwitz and make his way to freedom—among only a tiny handful who ever pulled off that near-impossible feat. 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. Against all odds, Vrba and his fellow escapee, Fred Wetzler, climbed mountains, crossed rivers, and narrowly missed German bullets until they had smuggled out the first full account of Auschwitz the world had ever seen—a forensically detailed report that eventually reached Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and the Pope. And yet too few heeded the warning that Vrba had risked everything to deliver. Though Vrba helped save two hundred thousand Jewish lives, he never stopped believing it could have been so many more. This is the story of a brilliant yet troubled man—a gifted "escape artist" who, even as a teenager, understood that the difference between truth and lies can be the difference between life and death. Rudolf Vrba deserves to take his place alongside Anne Frank, Oskar Schindler, and Primo Levi as one of the handful of individuals whose stories define our understanding of the Holocaust.

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