Informing the world about the horrors of Auschwitz: 100 years since the birth of Rudolf Vrba
Today marks the centenary of the birth of Rudolf Vrba, a Czechoslovak and Jewish biochemist, who escaped from the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942 together with fellow prisoner Alfréd Wetzler. Together they published the Vrba–Wetzler report. This eyewitness description is credited with waking the world up to the full horrors happening at Auschwitz.
Born Walter Rosenberg in Topoľčany, Slovakia, Vrba was one of four children. When he was 15, he was prohibited from attending school in Bratislava, on account of his Jewish status. Legal restrictions and the initial deportation of Jews from Slovakia motivated Vrba to attempt to flee to England. However, he was arrested at the Hungarian border and detained at the Nováky transit camp. He tried to escape from Nováky, but was caught. From there, at the insistence of an SS officer, Vrba was then sent to the Majdanek concentration camp in occupied Poland.
It was from Majdanek that Vrba was transferred to Auschwitz, the most lethal of the Nazi concentration camps. Having arrived in June 1942, he was later assigned to the position of a registrar. He was responsible for monitoring other prisoners and cataloging new arrivals. This role gave Vrba access to information about how the extermination camp functioned. Upon learning that officers at Auschwitz were expecting to receive Jews from Hungary, Vrba and fellow Czechoslovak Alfréd Wetzler decide to escape and to try to warn the Hungarian Jewish community.
On April 7th 1944, Vrba and Wetzler hid within a woodpile. There they remained, without moving or making a noise, for three nights and four days. They had spread tobacco soaked in gasoline to mask their scent from dogs. On April 9th, they finally emerged, assuming that the camp guards would no longer be looking for them in the vicinity. When asked whether the daring plan seemed possible, Vrba later commented:
“My [escape] plan did not seem hopeless to me. The Germans believed wholeheartedly that they had worked out a perfect system. But nothing is ever perfect. And I tried to find where the flaw was. There were many escape attempts, so I tried to learn from these failed attempts which ended up on the gallows.”
Moving at night and taking what food they were offered by Polish locals, they walked back to Slovakia and met up with the Slovak Jewish Council in Žilina.
It was in Žilina that Vrba and Wetzler composed their full report on what was happening at Auschwitz. The report contained detailed maps, descriptions of the gas chambers and crematoria, and estimates about the numbers of the murdered. It was also at this time that Vrba changed his name, no longer going by Walter Rosenberg for safety. The report, first distributed in Switzerland by George Mantello, reached the USA. Its content shifted official and public attitudes concerning the ongoing suffering of European Jews; the New York Herald Tribune called it "the most shocking document ever issued by a United States government agency". It may also have saved lives, since world leaders appealed to the Hungarian regent Miklós Horthy to stop Hungarian deportations to Auschwitz.
After the war, Rudolf Vrba remained for a while in Czechoslovakia, working for Charles University in Prague until 1958. He emigrated to Canada in 1967, where he taught and researched at the University of British Columbia. He was made professor of pharmacology in 1976. His testimonies were important contributions to the documentation and commemoration of the Holocaust. He submitted evidence to the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961. Rudolf Vrba died in Canada in 2006, aged 81.
