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

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Pestek gave the correct passwords, telling the other guards Lederer was on special duty, and both men bicycled out of the front gate. Now for a delightfully absorbing whodunnit that’s so marvelously twisty and smart its world becomes yours. This was truly an absolutely heartbreaking and completely incomprehensible (in the horrific detail of what occured), memoir. According to Austrian historian and Auschwitz survivor Hermann Langbein, his actions in particular indicate the limits of the absolute totalitarian hierarchy imposed by SS leaders. A moving autobiography from a Russian POW, like most books about Auschwitz it’s not an easy read at all.

Then, Freedland argues that Vrba was the first Jew to escape from Auschwitz to warn their people of the impending doom awaiting them in the camp. Lederer told Leo Holzer about what he had witnessed at Auschwitz, and according to his later testimony also informed Jirka Petschauer, the captain of the Jewish police inside the ghetto, and Otto Schliesser, a member of the Council of Elders.For all ebook purchases, you will be prompted to create an account or login with your existing HarperCollins username and password.

The book describes how Vrba, when detailed to sift through the belongings of new prisoners, came to realize that those prisoners would never need those belongings because they had been executed immediately upon reaching Auschwitz.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. Although rumors about the fate awaiting them at Auschwitz had already spread around the ghetto, many people refused to believe them. The print has some photos of Vrba and some of Auschwitz and some added material about the author, a real bonus over the audio.

But at trials and in interviews, he continued fighting to bring Nazis and their collaborators to justice. Every character turns out to be not who they appear to be, which author Joël Dicker pulls off with perfect puzzle-creating credibility.

At one point bullets were fired at them, at another they woke in the middle of a park where SS men were strolling with their families. Even while still in Auschwitz, Vrba had heard rumours that the camp was being expanded to cope with the arrival of about a million Hungarian Jews, the last surviving major European community. Another telegram four hours later reported that an SS man—presumably Pestek—was under suspicion for aiding the escape. At the start of this book, Jonathan Freedland tells an anecdote about how he first learnt about Rudolf Vrba: he and a friend had gone to see Claude Lanzmann's documentary Shoah, in which Vrba was featured, and his friend made the mistake of taking popcorn into the theatre. SS men walked close by with sniffer dogs but thanks to the machorka – Russian tobacco soaked in petrol and dried – wedged in the timbers, they missed the scent of the pair hiding underneath.