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Rudolf 'Rudi' Vrba ('', January 1, 2005. to escape from the German death camp at Auschwitz in Poland , and pass information to the Allies about the Mass Murder that was taking place there. The 32-page ''Vrba-Wetzler Report'', Gutman, Yisrael. ''Encyclopedia of the Holocaust''. Macmillan Publishing Company. ISBN 0028960904 "The Vrba Wetzler Report" , '''', March 31, 2006 Publication in June 1944 by the '' BBC '' and '' The New York Times '' of information from the report may have contributed to the decision by Hungarian leader Admiral Miklos Horthy to halt the mass deportation of Jews out of Hungary on July 7 , 1944 , allegedly out of fear that the Allies would hold members of the Hungarian government personally responsible for the deportees' deaths. Because it was the first report to attempt to estimate the numbers being murdered in Auschwitz, the ''Vrba-Wetzler report'' is regarded as one of the most important documents of the 20th century. " Vrba, Rudolf ", no byline, ''BC Bookworld author bank'', retrieved April 01, 2006 Copies of the original report are kept in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in New York , in the Vatican archives, and at the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem . On the news of Vrba's death from cancer in March 2006 at the age of 81, Ruth Linn, dean of education at Haifa University and author of ''Escaping Auschwitz: A Culture of Forgetting'', a book about Vrba's experiences, called him an "exemplary courageous hero and warrior," and said: "We have lost a rare history maker that the history tellers are yet to find the right words to describe." EARLY LIFE Vrba was born Walter Rosenberg in Topoľčany , Slovakia , to Elias and Helena (neé Grunfeldova) Rosenberg, who owned a steam saw-mill in Jaklovce near Margecany. Because he was a Jew, he was excluded at the age of 15 from the ''. ARREST , 1944. To be sent to the right meant assignment to a work detail, to the left, the Gas Chamber s.]] Vrba was arrested in March 1942 at the age of 18, again because he was Jewish, and was sent to the '', January 27, 2005 On June 30 , 1942 , he was transferred to Auschwitz I , the main camp of the Auschwitz complex and the administrative center for the satellite camps, where, from August 1942 until June 1943, he worked as prisoner no. 44070 in what was called "Kanada," the camp's name for the work detail that sorted the possessions confiscated from arriving prisoners, and disposed of the dead bodies among them. In June 1943, he was sent to the Auschwitz II Death Camp at Birkenau, some four kilometers away, although the journey could take ten days and many died ''en route''. On arrival, he was "selected" to go to the right rather than the left, which meant he had been chosen to work rather than be sent to the Gas Chamber s. He was given the job of registrar in the Quarantine section of the camp. From his barracks, he was able to watch the lorries driving towards the gas chambers, carrying the Jews who had been sent to the left. Vrba was later described by those who knew him as possessing a " Photographic Memory ," and as he roamed through the main camp and Birkenau, he attempted to commit to memory the numbers of Jews arriving and the place of origin of each transport. By April 1944, his own calculation was that 1,750,000 Jews had already been killed in the camps, a figure higher than those now accepted by mainstream historians. He also reported having overheard SS guards discuss how another "million units" of "Hungarian sausage" were about to arrive, and that a new area of the camp called "Mexico" was being constructed to accommodate them, although Czech historian Miroslav Kárný disputes that he heard this. Kárný, p. 556: "It is generally accepted that at the time Vrba and Wetzler were preparing their escape, it was known in Auschwitz that annihilation mechanisms were being perfected in order to kill hundreds of thousands of Hungary's Jews. It was this knowledge, according to Vrba, that became the main motive for their escape. {Link without Title} But in fact, there is no mention in the Vrba and Wetzler report that preparations were under way for the annihilation of Hungary's Jews. {Link without Title} If Vrba and Wetzler considered it necessary to record rumors about the expected arrival of Greece's Jewish transports, then why wouldn't they have recorded a rumor — had they known it — about the expected transports of hundreds of thousands of Hungary's Jews? {Link without Title} Though they did not know about about the imminent Hungarian Endloesung, they longed to testify "in order that the astounding Nazi crimes might not keep secret," to warn the world, and to appeal for the salvation of hundreds of thousands people who were in prisons in Auschwitz and other death camps or would soon arrive at the camps ..." ESCAPE Vrba and a fellow Slovak '' The men knew from previous escape attempts by other prisoners that, once their absence was noticed during the evening ''appel'', or roll call, the guards would continue to search for them for three days. They therefore remained in hiding from April 7 , 1944 , the first day of their escape, until the night of the third day, then made their way south, walking parallel to the Soła river, heading for the Polish Border With Slovakia , guiding themselves using a page torn from a child's Atlas Vrba had found while working in "Kanada." Vrba later said that, while working there, he had noticed prisoners' luggage containing children’s books and notebooks, which suggested to him that the Jews believed they were being resettled, and this strengthened his conviction that he had to get news to the Hungarian Jewish Community that they were in fact being transported there to be killed. ''THE VRBA-WETZLER REPORT'' Eight days after escaping, Vrba and Wetzler crossed the Polish-Slovakian border. They met a farmer who put them in touch with a Jewish doctor, who in turn referred them to a contact of his, Adre Steiner of the underground "Working Group," Fatran, Gila; ''The "Working Group"'', Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 8:2 (1994) pp164-201 a small group of activists working under the Slovak '' Judenrat '', or Jewish Council, whom they met in the town of Žilina . Vrba and Wetzler were interviewed separately, each describing the location and layout of Auschwitz, and giving a detailed account of how the Jews had their property stolen, then were murdered. Vrba also reported that prisoners were being used as slave labor for major German companies, and he provided the ''Judenrat'' with times and dates of Slovak and Czech transports, which the ''Judenrat'' leaders were able to check against their own records. Using their information, Dr. Oscar Krasnansky of the ''Judenrat'' wrote a detailed 32-page report, which he had completed by April 27 , 1944 . The report contains a precise description of the geography of the camps, the methodology of mass murder taking place there, and a history of what had happened there since April 1942. Vrba was told that copies of the report had been sent to the Hungarian Jewish community, and to Switzerland , allegedly by the end of April or early May 1944. Dr. Rudolf Kastner , a lawyer and journalist who acted as the head of the ''Zionist Vaad'', or Rescue and Relief Committee, is believed to have received a copy when he visited Slovakia on April 28. He chose not to publicize it, possibly in order not to jeopardize ongoing negotiations between himself and Adolf Eichmann , the SS officer in charge of the transport of Jews out of Hungary, to secure the release of a number of Jews in exchange for money or trucks. (See the Controversy Section Below .) How and when the report was distributed Although Kastner did not distribute the report widely, he is believed to have given a copy to Geza Soos, a Hungarian Foreign Ministry official who ran a resistance group, almost as soon as he received it on April 28. Bauer, Yehuda. ''Jews for Sale? Nazi–Jewish Negotiations 1933–1945''. Yale University Press, 1994, p. 157. Soos in turn gave it to Joszef Elias, head of the Joe Pasztor Misszio, the Good Shepherd Mission, a on May 22. However, on June 6, Arnost Rosin and Czesław Mordowicz, two prisoners who escaped from Auschwitz on May 27 — one month after Vrba and Wetzler — arrived in Slovakia and reported that, from May 15-27, 100,000 Hungarian Jews had arrived at the camp, most of them killed on arrival, allegedly with no forewarning of what was about to happen to them. John Conway , professor emeritus of history at UBC and a friend of Vrba, has written that, " {Link without Title} s a result, Vrba and Wetzler concluded that their information had been suppressed. Vrba, for one, remains convinced that if the intended victims had been warned, they would have resisted or hid or fled." (The information in the ''Vrba-Wetzler Report'' was combined with more details supplied by Rosin and Mordowicz, and the two reports later became known jointly as the ''Auschwitz Protocols''. Rees, Laurence. (2005). ''Auschwitz: A New History''. Public Affairs, p. 242-3. ) The ''Vrba-Wetzler Report'' is known to have reached the British and U.S. governments by mid-June. Elizabeth Wiskemann of the British Legation in Bern sent it to Allen Dulles , the head of U.S. intelligence, who sent it to the U.S. Department Of State in Washington, D.C. on June 16. Details from it were broadcast by the '' BBC '' on June 15, and on June 20, '' The New York Times '' published the first of three stories about the existence of "gas chambers in the notorious German concentration camps at Birkenau and Oświęcim {Link without Title} ." Several world leaders, including Pope Pius XII , President Franklin D. Roosevelt , and the King Of Sweden , appealed to Admiral Horthy to stop the deportations. On June 26, Richard Lichtheim, a member of the Jewish Agency in Geneva , sent a telegram to England calling on the Allies to hold members of the Hungarian government personally responsible for the killings. The cable was intercepted by Hungary and shown to Prime Minister Döme Sztójay , who passed it to Horthy. The mass deportations stopped on July 9. Although the mass deportations under the Horthy regime stopped in July 1944, Jews continued to be deported after the overthrow of his government and its replacement on October 15 , 1944 by the pro-German fascist Arrow Cross Party . In November, Eichmann arranged for tens of thousands of Budapest Jews to walk the 200 kilometers from Budapest to Vienna , Austria , Marching without food in the rain and snow. Eventually, protests from neutral countries and even from other SS officers forced Heinrich Himmler , the head of the SS, to instruct Eichmann to halt the marches. See Rees, Laurence. ''Auschwitz: A New History''. Public Affairs, 2005, p. 257-8. In all, 437,000 Jews were deported on 120 trains from Hungary to Auschwitz between May 15 and July 7 , 1944 . Conway, John . "Escaping Auschwitz: Sixty years later" , ''Vierteljahreshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte'', Vol. 53, no. 3, 2005, pp. 461-472. RESISTANCE ACTIVITIES Vrba joined the Czechoslovak Partisan Units in September 1944, taking Rudolf Vrba as his ''nom de guerre'', and fighting in a unit commanded by Milan Uher. He received the Czechoslovak Medal for Bravery, the Order of Slovak National Insurrection, and the Order of Meritorious Fighter, and legalized his new name after the liberation of Czechoslovakia. AFTER THE WAR In 1945 Vrba moved to '', April 01, 2006. In 1963 he published his memoir, ''Escape from Auschwitz: I cannot forgive'', which was also published in German (1964), French (1988), Dutch (1996), Czech (1998), and Hebrew (1998). He became a British citizen in 1966. Vrba settled in Canada in 1967, becoming a Canadian citizen in 1972, then spent 1973-5 as a research fellow at Harvard Medical School , before returning to Canada to become an associate professor of Pharmacology at the University Of British Columbia , specializing in Neurology . He became known internationally for more than 50 research papers on the chemistry of the brain, and for his work on Diabetes and cancer. In 1998, he received the title of Doctor of Philosophy ''Honoris Causa'' from the University Of Haifa "in recognition of his heroism and daring in exposing, during the war itself, the horrors of Auschwitz, which action led to the saving of Jewish lives; and in profound appreciation of his educational contribution and devotion to spreading knowledge about the Holocaust." The Czech "One World festival", in its "Right to Know" category, annually awards the "Rudolf Vrba Award" to original documentaries which "draw attention to an unknown or silenced theme concerning human rights." Rudolf Vrba , One World 2006 website, retrieved April 2, 2006 The award was established by Mary Robinson (then United Nations High Commissioner For Human Rights ) and Václav Havel (then President Of The Czech Republic ). Vrba's story was told in ''Genocide'', part of the BBC's ''World at War'' series in 1973; ''Auschwitz and the Allies'', directed by Rex Bloomstein and Martin Gilbert for the BBC in 1982; '' Shoah '' by Claude Lanzmann in 1985; and ''Witness to Auschwitz'' by Robin Taylor for CBC 's '' Man Alive '' series in 1990. He also appeared as a witness at the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial in 1964, and at the seven-week trial of Ernst Zundel in 1985. CONTROVERSY Vrba's allegations and the alleged suppression of his story The issue of why Kastner , the ''de facto'' head of the Rescue and Relief Committee, failed to distribute the report widely remains highly controversial and to some extent a matter of conjecture. Vrba himself condemned the response of Kastner and the entire Hungarian and Slovakian '' Judenräte '' (Jewish councils), believing that many of the 437,000 Hungarian Jews who ended up being sent to Auschwitz between May 15 and July 7 , 1944 would have resisted or hidden had they known they were being taken there to be killed, and not resettled. At the time the report was received, Kastner was involved in complex negotiations with website. Accessed April 5, 2005. The "one million Jews", who would have to leave Hungary and emigrate anywhere but Palestine , were being offered for 25,000 trucks supplied by the Western Allies , which would be used for German civilian purposes, or on the Eastern Front . Kastner's first meeting with Eichmann took place on April 25 , 1944 , and three days later, on April 28, Kastner received a copy of the Vrba-Wetzler Report. On the same day, the first trainload of Hungarian Jews left for Auschwitz. Bauer, Yehuda. ''Jews for Sale? Nazi–Jewish Negotiations 1933–1945''. Yale University Press, 1994, p. 156. Vrba alleges that Kastner failed to distribute the report in order not to jeopardize the negotiations with Eichmann, but instead acted on it privately by arranging, along with the rest of the Hungarian ''Judenrat'', for a trainload of 1,700 Hungarian Jews to escape to Switzerland , consisting of, according to historian John Conway of UBC , "themselves, their relatives, a coterie of Zionists , some distinguished Jewish intellectuals, and a number of wealthy Jewish entrepreneurs." (See Kastner Train .) The allegations about Kastner were eventually heard by the Supreme Court Of Israel in 1957, after a writer accused him of having collaborated with the Nazis. Because Kastner was by then a government minister, the Israeli government sued the writer for libel, and although Kastner was eventually exonerated, he was shot on March 3 , 1957 by an assassin as a result of the controversy, and died of his wounds nine days later. Hecht, Ben. ''Perfidy''. Milah Press, first published 1961; this edition 1999. ISBN 0964688638 There are further allegations that successive Israeli historians have downplayed Vrba's role and achievements because of his controversial views about Kastner and the Hungarian ''Judenrat'', many of whom went on to hold prominent positions in Israel. Ruth Linn, dean of education at memorial museum in Jerusalem , it is available only in Hungarian and German , minus the names of its authors. Linn, Ruth. (2004) ''Escaping Auschwitz. A culture of forgetting'', Cornell University Press. Countering Vrba's allegations British historian Martin Gilbert disagrees with Vrba's criticism of Kastner, arguing that "Kastner and his colleagues in the Zionist leadership in Hungary were already committed to their negotiations with Eichmann ... Not urgent warnings to their fellow Jews to resist deportation, but secret negotiations with the SS aimed at averting deportation altogether, had become the avenue of hope chosen by the Hungarian Zionist leaders" — but see Arendt, Hannah . ''Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil'', Penguin Classics, Jan 1, 1994, ISBN 0140187650, p.42: "The greatest 'idealist' Eichmann ever encountered among the Jews was Dr. Rudolf Kastner, with whom he negotiated during the Jewish deportations from Hungary and with whom he came to an agreement that he, Eichmann, would permit the 'illegal' departure of a few thousand Jews to Palestine (the trains were in fact guarded by German police) in exchange for 'quiet and order' in the camps from which hundreds of thousands were shipped to Auschwitz. The few thousand saved by the agreement, prominent Jews and members of the Zionist youth organizations, were, in Eichmann's words, 'the best biological material.' Dr. Kastner, as Eichmann understood it, had sacrificed his fellow-Jews to his 'idea,' and this was as it should be.". Yehuda Bauer , Professor of Holocaust Studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University Of Jerusalem , has argued against Vrba's contention that more lives would have been saved if the report had been released earlier, writing that it was already too late for anything to alter the Nazis' deportation plans. Bauer, Yehuda. "Anmerkungen zum 'Auschwitz-Bericht' von Rudolf Vrba," ''Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte'', Vol. 45 1997, p.297-307. Bauer cautions about the need to distinguish between the receipt of information and its "internalization," where it's regarded as correct and worthy of action. . Bauer, Yehuda. ''Jews for Sale? Nazi–Jewish Negotiations 1933–1945''. Yale University Press, 1994, p. 72 Bauer argues that this is a complicated process: "During the Holocaust, countless individuals received information and rejected it, suppressed it, or rationalized about it, were thrown into despair without any possibility of acting on it, or seemingly internalized it and then behaved as though it had never reached them." Others argue that Vrba's story has not been suppressed. Uri Dromi of the Israel Democracy Institute writes that at least four popular Israeli books on the Holocaust mention Vrba and Wetzler's escape; that Weztler's testimony is recounted at length in Livia Rothkirchen's ''Hurban yahadut Slovakia'' ("The Destruction of Slovakian Jewry"), published by Yad Vashem in 1961; and that Vrba told his story on Israeli television in September 1978, when it broadcast the miniseries ''. How many people know about Haviva Raik?" In Yehuda Bauer's view, " {Link without Title} he trauma of the Holocaust had a severe effect on the internal intra-Jewish discourse, in the form of baseless accusations whose origin lay in the despair and anger over the loss of so many. The fury was directed at those who tried to save lives, in effect, accusing them of murder. It is almost pointless to try to quarrel with this anger, since facts and logical arguments cannot assuage it." Dr. Robert Rozett, head librarian at ''Yad Vashem'', and author of the entry on the ''Auschwitz Report'' in ''Encyclopedia of the Holocaust,'' states: "There are people who come into the subject from a certain angle and think that they've uncovered the truth. A historian who deals seriously with the subject understands that the truth is complex and multifaceted." SEE ALSO
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