My guest is Jonathan Friedland.

Jonathan Friedland is a guardian columnist and present a BBC Radio 4's contemporary history series, The Longview.

His latest book has just been published, The Escape Artist, The Man Who Brooke Out of Auschwitz

to Warn the World. Welcome to the podcast, Jonathan.

Good to be with you, Paul. Really good.

Well, my first question is, so who is the escape artist? Why did you want to write a book about him?

The escape artist is Rudolf Verber, who was born as Walter Rosenberg, who is in a tiny group. I mean,

really a handful of Jews who escaped from Auschwitz and successfully made their way to freedom,

of those who actually physically broke out of Auschwitz themselves, there were only four,

and he and his escape partner, Fred Vettler, were the first.

And they did it in April 1944, and they did it to warn the world.

They did it to let the world know about Auschwitz,

because at the time that was, in effect, secret knowledge,

which they wanted to smuggle out because they wanted it to stop. They wanted

the mass killing and the mass slaughter to stop. And Verber himself had become convinced. He did it

instantly when he was 19 years old. He arrived at Auschwitz, nearly two years earlier as a 17-year-old,

and became rapidly convinced

that the only reason why this uniquely new institution in human history, a killing center,

devised and built solely for the purpose of mass extermination, the only reason it could function

was through the ignorance of its victims,

the fact that those who arrived at the camp didn't know what was going to happen to them.

And therefore, he thought the only way to stop it is to make sure this is known about

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