7 April 1944

After days of delay, weeks of obsessive preparation, months of watching the failed attempts

of others, and two years of seeing the depths to which human beings could sink, the moment

had finally come, it was time to escape.

The two other prisoners were already there at the designated spot, wordlessly they gave

the nod, do it now.

Walter and Fred did not hesitate.

They climbed on top of the timbers, found the opening, and one after the other they dropped

inside.

A second later, their comrades moved the planks into place above their heads, one of them

whispered, one voyage, and then all was dark and silent.

Dominic, that is the completely gripping opening to Jonathan Friedland's book, The Escape

Artist, about Rudolf Ferber, the man who escaped Auschwitz, and the Holocaust is a subject

that we haven't yet really done in depth on the rest of history, but if ever there was

a way into that darkest of subjects, Jonathan Friedland's book is it?

It is absolutely.

It is.

Hello, everybody.

Yes, I read this book last spring when it came out, and that opening scene, unforgettable.

The book's editor at the Sunday Times said to me, would you like to review this book,

which is about somebody who escaped from Auschwitz?

I have to say, I'm ashamed to say, I didn't know that anybody had ever escaped from Auschwitz.

...