The Man Who Escaped from Auschwitz to Warn the World
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 14 November 2022
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rudolf Vrba was sent to Auschwitz at the age of seventeen, and, because he was young and in good health, he was not killed immediately but put to labor in the camp. Vrba (originally named Walter Rosenberg) quickly discovered that the scale of the killing was greater than anyone on the outside knew or could imagine, and Jewish communities were being deported without understanding their fate. Jonathan Freedland chronicles Vrba’s story in his new book, “The Escape Artist.” The young Vrba had a “crucial realization, which is [that] the only way this machine is going to be stopped—this death machine—is if somebody gets the word out,” Freedland told David Remnick. Freedland recounts how, against terrible odds, Vrba managed to escape the camp, and provided direct testimony of the Holocaust that reached Allied governments.
This interview was recorded at a live event at the Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust.
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| 1:11.9 | This is the Politics and More podcast. I'm David Remnick. |
| 1:20.6 | In 1986, I went to see Shoah, Claude Lonsman's film about the Holocaust. |
| 1:27.1 | And to this day, I'm pretty certain that it's not only a masterwork, but the greatest achievement in documentary film. |
| 1:33.8 | Lansman got remarkable interviews, an SS officer who was at Treblinka, a barber at the same camp, |
| 1:40.8 | a Polish railway worker who, under duress, helped drive the locomotive pulling box |
| 1:45.8 | cars filled with Jews to the death camps. |
| 1:49.5 | And then there was Rudolf Verba. |
| 1:52.4 | Verba was sent to Auschwitz when he was just 17 years old. |
| 1:56.4 | And when he appears in the documentary show, Verba is still in middle age. |
| 1:59.8 | He's immensely alive. He's |
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