Escape from Auschwitz
"Auschwitz, the great escape" was the title of a program I saw on Israeli television (mostly in English) commemorating International Holocaust Memorial Day, February 27, the date that the Russian Army liberated Auschwitz.
Many people tried to escape from Auschwitz, but actually it was almost impossible, most were caught, tortured and hanged. Among the Jews that it is known actually managed to escape were Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, two friends from Solvakia, who escaped in April, 1944. How could they manage an escape from a huge camp surrounded by barbed wire and heavily guarded, because the Nazis did not want the secret of the death camps and the extermination of the Jews at Auschwitz to be known.
Wetzler arrived at Auschwitz first and managed to get a post as an Administrator and the Germans used him and relied on him. When his friend Rudolf Vrba arrived he helped him to get a similar job as a secretary. Because of their positions they were able to walk around the camp and avoid the terrible conditions in the main barracks. They also were able to see exactly what the Germans were doing, how many people they killed and from where they came. Vrba decided that he must escape and bring this news to the world, especially the Jews. He was particularly depressed when he saw a camp filled with 20,000 Czech Jews, mostly from Treblinka, who were murdered in one go. Then the camp was being enlarged to accommodate the Hungarian Jews, of which there were ca. 650,000.
The plan that they devised to escape was simple, they saw that when people escaped, the guards searched intensively for them for 3 days, and if they could not find them after that they gave up. They realized that they must have a place to hide outside the barbed wire fence for 3 days. They managed this by observing that the Guards had the inmates build stacks of wood for future use outside the barbed wire fence. They arranged for a hole to be left in the middle of one of these wood piles by the inmates building it. Then one day they managed to be out of the camp and then before roll call sneaked into the wood pile. They covered themselves with wood and used a scent to cover their smell from the dogs. After three days and nights they released themselves and escaped into the woods. They were lucky and managed to cover half the distance to the Slovakian border, a total of 140 km, in a few days before they needed to get food and then were helped by some Polish peasants who showed them where to cross the border.
In Slovakia, they made their way to the headquarters of the Jewish Community in Bratislava, but when they told their story, the leadership would not believe them. They asked them to write a report and give names and details including their own people from Slovakia. When the Vrba-Wetzler Report was finished after a few days in April 1944, they finally accepted it. It was a 32-page report that documented in incredible detail the extermination of the Jews being carried out in secrecy in Auschwitz. But, it was too late to save most of the Jews of Slovakia. Luckily the Head of the Jewish Community Organization in Budapest, Hungary, Rudolf Kastner, visited Bratislava a few days later and was handed a copy that was translated into Hungarian. However, Kastner, with a fellow leader Joel Brand, were negotiating with Adolf Eichmann, who was in Budapest organizing the transport and extermination of the Hungarian Jews.
For reasons unknown, Kastner incredibly did not publicize the Report, but send Joel Brand to communicate with the British and Americans that Eichmann was prepared to release 1 million Hungarian Jews in exchange for 10,000 trucks. Brand managed to get to Istanbul and contact the British there, but they arrested him and imprisoned him in Cairo. Meanwhile the Jews of Hungary were being murdered in Auschwitz at the rate of 12,000 a day! Kastner meanwhile continued his negotiations and finally Eichmann allowed a train containing 1,200 Jews, including Kastner, his family and friends, to take them to freedom. It was suggested later that Kastner obtained his freedom in exchange for not releasing the Report and warning the mass of Hungarian Jews of their fate, thus making Eichmann's job a lot easier. Kastner was assassinated in Israel in 1957 as a traitor to the Hungarian Jews.
Meanwhile copies of the Vrba-Wetzler Report were received by the Hungarian underground, the Pope, the British and the Americans. It was received by Pres. Roosevelt and on June 20, 1944, The New York Times published the first article based on it that described the death camps and the extermination of the Jews. Both the BBC and the VOA issued Government warnings that all those associated with the massacres of Jews would be caught and held accountable.
Admiral Horthy, Head of the Hungarian Fascist Government, heard these reports and was worried by them. By chance soon thereafter the USAF bombed Budapest, and Horthy believing that this was a warning related to the deportation of the Hungarian Jews, ordered the deportations stopped. Hitler was personally furious at Horthy for doing this, but he could not have it reversed. Although ca. 475,00 Jews had by this time already been deported, ca. 200,000 had not. Although Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler were unable to save most of the Hungarian Jews, one can say that they were indirectly responsible for saving ca. 150,000 Jewish lives.
Vrba moved to Canada after the war and became a Professor of Pharmacology at the University of British Columbia, where he died in 2006. Wetzler stayed in Slovakia and died there in 1988. Theirs was one of the bravest acts of WWII in that they saw what was happening in Auschwitz, they managed to accomplish an incredible escape and then alerted the world what was happening there in all its terrible detail.
Many people tried to escape from Auschwitz, but actually it was almost impossible, most were caught, tortured and hanged. Among the Jews that it is known actually managed to escape were Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, two friends from Solvakia, who escaped in April, 1944. How could they manage an escape from a huge camp surrounded by barbed wire and heavily guarded, because the Nazis did not want the secret of the death camps and the extermination of the Jews at Auschwitz to be known.
Wetzler arrived at Auschwitz first and managed to get a post as an Administrator and the Germans used him and relied on him. When his friend Rudolf Vrba arrived he helped him to get a similar job as a secretary. Because of their positions they were able to walk around the camp and avoid the terrible conditions in the main barracks. They also were able to see exactly what the Germans were doing, how many people they killed and from where they came. Vrba decided that he must escape and bring this news to the world, especially the Jews. He was particularly depressed when he saw a camp filled with 20,000 Czech Jews, mostly from Treblinka, who were murdered in one go. Then the camp was being enlarged to accommodate the Hungarian Jews, of which there were ca. 650,000.
The plan that they devised to escape was simple, they saw that when people escaped, the guards searched intensively for them for 3 days, and if they could not find them after that they gave up. They realized that they must have a place to hide outside the barbed wire fence for 3 days. They managed this by observing that the Guards had the inmates build stacks of wood for future use outside the barbed wire fence. They arranged for a hole to be left in the middle of one of these wood piles by the inmates building it. Then one day they managed to be out of the camp and then before roll call sneaked into the wood pile. They covered themselves with wood and used a scent to cover their smell from the dogs. After three days and nights they released themselves and escaped into the woods. They were lucky and managed to cover half the distance to the Slovakian border, a total of 140 km, in a few days before they needed to get food and then were helped by some Polish peasants who showed them where to cross the border.
In Slovakia, they made their way to the headquarters of the Jewish Community in Bratislava, but when they told their story, the leadership would not believe them. They asked them to write a report and give names and details including their own people from Slovakia. When the Vrba-Wetzler Report was finished after a few days in April 1944, they finally accepted it. It was a 32-page report that documented in incredible detail the extermination of the Jews being carried out in secrecy in Auschwitz. But, it was too late to save most of the Jews of Slovakia. Luckily the Head of the Jewish Community Organization in Budapest, Hungary, Rudolf Kastner, visited Bratislava a few days later and was handed a copy that was translated into Hungarian. However, Kastner, with a fellow leader Joel Brand, were negotiating with Adolf Eichmann, who was in Budapest organizing the transport and extermination of the Hungarian Jews.
For reasons unknown, Kastner incredibly did not publicize the Report, but send Joel Brand to communicate with the British and Americans that Eichmann was prepared to release 1 million Hungarian Jews in exchange for 10,000 trucks. Brand managed to get to Istanbul and contact the British there, but they arrested him and imprisoned him in Cairo. Meanwhile the Jews of Hungary were being murdered in Auschwitz at the rate of 12,000 a day! Kastner meanwhile continued his negotiations and finally Eichmann allowed a train containing 1,200 Jews, including Kastner, his family and friends, to take them to freedom. It was suggested later that Kastner obtained his freedom in exchange for not releasing the Report and warning the mass of Hungarian Jews of their fate, thus making Eichmann's job a lot easier. Kastner was assassinated in Israel in 1957 as a traitor to the Hungarian Jews.
Meanwhile copies of the Vrba-Wetzler Report were received by the Hungarian underground, the Pope, the British and the Americans. It was received by Pres. Roosevelt and on June 20, 1944, The New York Times published the first article based on it that described the death camps and the extermination of the Jews. Both the BBC and the VOA issued Government warnings that all those associated with the massacres of Jews would be caught and held accountable.
Admiral Horthy, Head of the Hungarian Fascist Government, heard these reports and was worried by them. By chance soon thereafter the USAF bombed Budapest, and Horthy believing that this was a warning related to the deportation of the Hungarian Jews, ordered the deportations stopped. Hitler was personally furious at Horthy for doing this, but he could not have it reversed. Although ca. 475,00 Jews had by this time already been deported, ca. 200,000 had not. Although Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler were unable to save most of the Hungarian Jews, one can say that they were indirectly responsible for saving ca. 150,000 Jewish lives.
Vrba moved to Canada after the war and became a Professor of Pharmacology at the University of British Columbia, where he died in 2006. Wetzler stayed in Slovakia and died there in 1988. Theirs was one of the bravest acts of WWII in that they saw what was happening in Auschwitz, they managed to accomplish an incredible escape and then alerted the world what was happening there in all its terrible detail.
posted by Jack Cohen at 7:44 AM
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