|
The events it describes are still inconceivable; his actions, beyond impressive.There is an excellent PBS special on this event. The book itself is a page turner, i could hardly put it down. Go to www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/escape-from-auschwitz/vrbas-and-wetzlers-escapeThe events are inconceivable. This man at 17 years old made an effort to inform the world of what he witnessed in Auschwitz. His courage is overwhelming.
Never lose faith in humanity: Rudolf Vrba never ceases to surprise us. Poland is understood faster than other countries. Thank you Mr Rudolf Vrba for this extraordinary testimony. The remarkable intervention of the apostolic nuncio (= pope's ambassador in Slovakia) who believed the truth of the report Vrba after having heard at length, Pope Pius XII (we are well aware of the controversy about it) and the Apostolic Nuncio in Hungary permit to stop the deportation of 800,000 other Jews.
The disbelief was the first rendezvous of his report, his contacts, both the secret of Auschwitz was meticulously kept, as the Great Lie operating at full. Tribute is their record. Rudolf Vrba (pronounced Verba), Slovak Jewish 17 years, is deported in 1942 to Maïdanek then, quickly, Auschwitz and Birkenau. The exceptional strength of character, combined with a sense of humour extraordinary luck, fidelity in friendship, will enable it to survive until his escape from Auschwitz in April 1944. We know why and how history took place (including the Warsaw ghetto). 400,000 were deported.
In the extermination camps, vermin encountered the nobility of soul, common law prisoners were killers, some kapos were real men, there was even a SS who was disgusted escape 2 Jews, is a long list of a tragic hero and low humanity who perished, often to defend it. The quality of work is exceptional. Rudolf Vrba manages to show the stupidity of executioners, their stupidity mechanical, projects a beam of light on the banality of evil and makes us laugh in many pages. Laugh as knows so well do so in a Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago about Soviet concentration camps. Extreme poverty and weakness of humanity, Dr. Laughs in misery, death, despair, but never despair. The motivation for his escape (one of the very few who have succeeded) was to save Hungarian Jews from the terrible mass deportation ahead.
The gift of humor is sublime. In exchange, Kastner - the book teaches us - got saved his life, his family and all, that of 1,684 Jews. It is necessary to recall that ever the official version and therefore mediated in the peoples occupied by the Nazis for deportation meant extermination. Rudolf Kastner, head of the Jewish Rescue Committee in Hungary, preferred to communicate Vrba's report on the atrocities of the extermination camps (and very precise quantification of 1,765,000 killed, Eichmann rather than alerting the Jewish community so that it will revolt.
This book is a page turner from the moment you start reading. I often found myself wondering how he could remember such detail and quotes, but by the end of the book I realized that while some of the details may be somewhat imprecise, the impression and the overall truth of the testimony was both powerful and unchallengeable. It is written from the perspective of an adolescent man. Vrba survive and deal with the atrocities that surrounded him: young people simply believe that they will live and maintain hope far longer than those with experience about the human condition.
Here he was clearly enraged at the Hungarian Jewish leadership (See Zionist organization Arcvhives). Also, I was shocked at the overall readability of the prose on matters so morbid. The one note of negativism was Mr. Indeed the original title of this work was I can not forgive. Vrba's attack on the Zionists. It is not as complex as the book written by Alfred Wexler that was recently translated into English.
The book sounded like it came from an optimist on life or a person so proud of his accomplishment of saving so many that nothing could mar his implacability. Did he mean forgive both the Germans and their Jewish collaborators or just the former. Youth and inexperience is likely what helped Mr. Plus, he had a good deal of luck, which he does not discuss but comes through.
It is a gripping and emotional read. Because of his and Fred Weltzer's escapse, the world was informed of the gruesome atrocities committed at Auschwitz and other concentration camps. Highly recommended. An important account of Rudi Vrba's fateful escape from the death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Details his life right before his capture, time at Auschwitz and after his escape.
None scuffled with the SS. Ben Hecht was too easy on Rudolf Kastner, the Hungarian "Zionist" leader who sold his soul to Adolf Eichmann. Vrba's book to learn just how culpable Kastner was in the extermination of the first 400,000 Jews of Budapest. He succeeded but we all failed him
I had read all that before. I borrowed the Vrba book because I wanted to know more about his attempt to warn world Jewry. I did not need to read all about 4,000 naked women standing for hours in the December cold waiting to be gassed and other terrible memories. Despite the title, about 95% of the book deals with the details of Auschwitz.
Now I know that Kastner got the warning for which Vrba worked so hard in plenty of time not only to warn the Jews of Hungary of what was in store for them (certainly, not "resettlement") but also to lay the groundwork for resistance. They even served in Kastner's Jewish police, which helped Eichmann load the cattle cars.The book is a chore. You have to read Dr. None tried to take one SS man's life along with his or her own.
And they all got on the cattle cars willingly, sheep led to the slaughter.None resisted. Until I read Vrba, I thought Kastner's greatest crime was that he saved himself and his friends and family from the Nazis, that he testified at Nuremberg on behalf of SS Col Kurt (Gold Teeth) Becher, and that he lied about it all. It turns out that Eichmann had only 140 Germans in Budapest to help him deport one million people.
|
