Jonathan Freedland’s The Escape Artist tells the remarkable story of Rudolf Vrba, a 19-year-old prisoner at Auschwitz who, having been sent to work in “Kanada”, a store housing the luggage taken from new arrivals, began to understand the truth of their fate: they were there not to be resettled but to be murdered. Galvanised by this knowledge, he set himself a mission: to “escape and sound the alarm”.
Vrba joined forces with a childhood friend, Fred Wetzler, to create a hiding place under a pile of wood in a lumber yard in the camp’s outer compound. Having plugged the gaps with petrol-soaked tobacco to prevent guard dogs from picking up their scent, the pair hid there for three days and nights listening to the search operation. Once the hunt had been called off, they crept out from beneath the wood and made their escape.
Freedland, a Guardian journalist, whose voice will be familiar to listeners of BBC Radio 4’s The Long View, is the narrator, telling Vrba’s story with authority and solemnity. Much of his research was based on his conversations with Vrba’s first wife, Gerta, who gave Freedland a suitcase of his letters, and Vrba’s second wife and widow, Robin. Along with the audacious breakout from Auschwitz, The Escape Artist documents Vrba’s efforts to alert world leaders to the industrial scale murder being committed by the Nazis, and their shocking slowness to act. Freedland recalls the words of the philosopher Raymond Aron who, when asked about the Holocaust, reflected: “I knew but I didn’t believe it. And because I didn’t believe it, I didn’t know.”
The Escape Artist is available via Hodder & Stoughton, 11hr 47min
Further listening
The Rachel Incident
Caroline O’Donoghue, WF Howes, 8hr 36min
Clara Harte narrates this tale of a student who sets out to seduce her married college professor but is thwarted when she finds him in flagrante with her best friend, James.
Beastly
Keggie Carew, Canongate, 16hr 39min
A beguiling and heartfelt account of our complex and often contradictory relationship with the animal kingdom. Pippa Haywood reads.
